Experimentation of the bilinear elastic behavior of plain-woven GFRP composite with embedded SMA wires

In this paper, a plain-woven glass-fabric-reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite with embedded shape memory alloy (SMA) wires is investigated by means of experiments. The vacuum-assisted resin injection (VARI) method is utilized to fabricate the composite specimens. Quasi-static uniaxial tensile tests are then carried out to evaluate the influence of SMA reinforcement on the stress-strain behavior of the composite. Only the elastic behavior of the composite is considered in the present study. The tensile strain in all the experiments is kept below 2.5% to avoid debonding of the SMA-resin interface, which would lead to failure of the composite. Stress-strain curves are obtained and shown to present a bilinear behavior due to phase transformation taking place in the SMA wires beyond a certain stress threshold.