Noncircular CFRP bicycle’s chainring. part I: static and low-velocity impact analysis

Zhorachaid Thanawarothon , Paripat Pairat , Christophe Bouvet (1) , Laurent Mezeix (2)

1 ICA - Institut Clément Ader
2 Faculty of Informatics, Burapha University

The paper presents an experimental analysis to determine the teeth failure of noncircular composite chainring. A noncircular carbon/epoxy chainring with a specific stacking of 11 plies is studied. In a first step, a quasi-static tensile test is realized on the chain and on the chainring to determine their strength. As the damage of composites is a major concern, as a second step the low-velocity/low-energy impact drop tests are performed. Five levels of impact energy are investigated in order to study the energy effect on the teeth damage, and the damage localization is analyzed using C-Scan. Quasi-static results show that the metallic chain fails first. Experimental impact results reveal that teeth damage is presented only for an impact higher than 1.6 J. Finally, the total teeth failure appears for an energy close to 2.5 J.

Mots clés: Noncircular chainring; Low-velocity impact; CFRP; Failure; Experiments

Domaines: Matériaux et structures en mécanique [physics.class-ph]

Zhorachaid Thanawarothon, Paripat Pairat, Christophe Bouvet, Laurent Mezeix. Noncircular CFRP bicycle’s chainring. part I: static and low-velocity impact analysis. Composites: Mechanics, Computations, Applications: An International Journal, 2018, 9 (3), pp.189-205. ⟨10.1615/CompMechComputApplIntJ.2018025470⟩. ⟨hal-01880447⟩