90 Proc. of the Fourth Intl. Conf. Advances in Civil, Structural and Mechanical Engineering- CSM 2016 Copyright © Institute of Research Engineers and Doctors, USA .All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-63248-093-4 doi: 10.15224/ 978-1-63248-093-4-77 Mechanical Properties of 2D Cross-Ply E- Glass Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic Laminated Composite Materials Murat Yazici, Hakkı Özer, İdris Karen, Yücel Can, Cengiz Torçuk Abstract— In accordance with the basic demand of the automotive industry, like reducing weight, lower emission values and fuel economy, researchers are working on Thermoplastic Composites (TPC) in the fields of developing, producing and recycling. The main reason of this is that Thermoplastic Composites have a lower density, higher toughness and higher impact strength besides thermoformability. Furthermore, Keywords: Thermoplastic Composite Materials, Mechanical Properties, Damage Mechanisms Automotive Industry has focused attention on thermoplastic composites as a consequence of the importance of recyclable materials were risen. Cross ply [0/90] 5 continuous glass fiber reinforced Polyamide (PA), Polyethylene (PE) and Polypropylene (PP) laminated composites were produced. The mechanical properties of these materials were obtained by appropriate tests. I. INTRODUCTION In recent years, researchers in the automotive industry have focused on improving the strength of existing parts and producing lightweight parts which cause lower CO 2 emissions. Studies showed that composite materials can be an alternative to conventional engineering materials because of their higher specific strength and lower density [1,2]. Composite materials can be different characteristic due to used reinforcement and matrix materials. TPC materials are preferable than Thermoset Composite materials because of having advantages like being recyclable and re-formability at specific Murat Yazici Uludag University Engineering Faculty, Automotive Eng. Dept. Turkey Hakkı Özer Uludag University Engineering Faculty, Automotive Eng. Dept. Turkey İdris Karen Bursa Orhangazi University, Eng. Faculty, Mech. Eng. Dept. Bursa/ Turkey Yücel Can Oyak-Renault Cengiz Torçuk Tofaş-FIAT temperatures. Also, those structures have some more advantages as high fracture toughness and high damage tolerance [3,4]. Sorrentino et al. [7] presented an interlaminar strength study to obtain the best compatibility between fiber and matrix. They showed that; increasing compatibility between fiber/matrix improved the impact energy absorption. Parabhakaran et al. developed the TPC materials with PA6 matrix, by commingled yarns and prepreg methods. Their study showed that as TPC materials produced by the commingled yarns method have higher strength properties. However, the TPC materials produced by prepreg method have higher strength properties in compression test [8]. Researchers carried out studies on developing TPC materials, using TPC materials in automotive industry and obtaining high strength TPC structures by lamination techniques. Then they investigated, influences of the different matrix and reinforcement materials used in various production methods on mechanical properties are analyzed [5, 9-11]. In this study, three type of TPC materials were produced which consist of continuous E-glass fiber compatible with thermoplastic as reinforcement and PA, PE and PP as a matrix, by lamination techniques. Composite production was carried out placing from [0/90] 5 laminate orientations in a hot press for a while. To determine the mechanical properties of TPC materials Tension, Compression, Shear and Charpy impact tests were made according to standards. For Finite Element damage analysis, the experimental failure data of the TPCs and elastic constants are needed. In this study elastic constants and critical stress values were obtained experimentally.