Experimental and Numerical Study on Mechanical Behavior of Steel/GFRP/CFRP Hybrid Structure under Bending Loading with Adhesive Bond Strength Assessment

Adhesive bonding between steel and carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite leads to hybrid structures that combine the high strength and ductility of steel with the excellent specific strength and stiffness of CFRP composite. There is, however, a concern regarding possible galvanic corrosion when steel and carbon fibers are bonded together. One way to overcome this problem is placing glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite between the steel and CFRP composite, creating a more complex steel/GFRP/CFRP hybrid structure. Therefore, experimental and numerical studies on the mechanical behavior of the adhesive bonds between the steel sheet and the GFRP/CFRP hybrid composite were carried out. Among the different failure patterns, mode II was chosen for analysis because metal-polymer composite structures are usually subjected to bending, and debonding may occur due to in-plane shear stress. The tested steel/GFRP/CFRP hybrid structure was made of a hot-formed 22MnB5 boron steel sheet, intermediate single-ply bidirectional GFRP composite, and three-ply unidirectional CFRP composite. Additional mechanical tests were also carried out to determine various engineering constants of the components to simulate the debonding process. A finite element model of the steel/GFRP/CFRP hybrid structure with a typical cohesive interface was established and verified against the experimental data. The results showed that due to the use of various materials, the dominant failure modes in the hybrid structure under bending loading were a brittle fracture of the CFRP composite and debonding between the steel and the GFRP composite. However, the load-bearing capacity of the hybrid structure was five times greater than that of a non-reinforced steel sheet. In addition, its mass was only 28% greater than the non-reinforced steel sheet. The obtained results provided valuable conclusions and useful data to continue further research on the mechanical behavior of steel/GFRP/CFRP hybrid structures.