Mechanical properties of offshoring polymer composite pipes at various temperatures

Abstract : Polymer composite pipes can be exposed to the thermomechanical loading due to hot and cold fluid flow, which results in the degradation of their properties. In this paper, effect on mechanical properties of composite pipes under different temperatures ranging from −40 to 80 °C is studied experimentally. The composite pipes consist of glass/epoxy tubes having 86 mm internal diameter and 6.2 mm of thickness with ±55° glass filament winding, intended for offshoring applications. TEMA TTC machine and split disk are used for uniaxial tensile tests and the thermal aging is considered with the help of SERVONTAN climatic chamber. Thermal aging is carried out on these specimens in climatic chamber for 8 h at different temperatures and then uniaxial test is performed. Experimental results have shown degradation in the mechanical properties of polymer pipes with an increase in the temperature. For pipes at colder temperature, the rigidity of composite increases progressively with the temperature and results in drastic decrease in the displacement at break. Also there is a decrease in the yield stress and an increase in yield strain with an increase in the temperature.