ABSTRACT

the current trend in aerospace automobile and structural components is to replace metalic components with composites due to their in herent like light weight and immune to corrosion. generally the fibre reinforced epoxy laminated plates are fabricated with several layers of fibre with opposite orientation in an epoxy matrix.in this investigation an effort is made to increase the tensile strength by subjecting the fibers to stitching with a cotton thread before the application of the hardener and the epoxy materail. the experiments were conducted on stitched and un-stitched fibre glass epoxy laminates.the results of the tensile tests revealed an appreciable increase in the tensile strength of the stitched laminates when compared with the un-stitched laminates.

KEYWORDS; STITCHED,UN-STITCHED,TENSILE STRENGTH,FIBRE GLASS,EPOXY,LAMINATES.