PSI - Issue 68

M. Totaro et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 68 (2025) 197–204

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M. Totaro et al. / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2025) 000–000

studied as demonstrated by numerous scientific studies (Pareek et al., 2019; Scalici et al., 2016). Lapena et al. (2018) conducted a comparative analysis of Basalt and E-glass fibre composites, showing superior performance of BF composite in terms of tensile strength (45% higher) and interfacial property interlaminar shear stress (11% higher). Lopresto et al. (2011) also evaluated the possibility of replacing glass fibres with BF, by testing E-glass and BF reinforced plastic laminates. They showed a higher performance of the basalt material in terms of Young modulus, compressive and bending strength, impact force and energy. Mutalikdesai et al. (2017) investigated the mechanical properties of Epoxy / BF / Flax Fiber Hybrid composites, revealing that increasing the BF content led to an improvement in the composite’s mechanical properties. The present study was conducted in the field of a research activity that aims to compare the mechanical behaviour of Basalt and Glass composites, in order to assess the possibility of replacing glass fibre with basalt fibre in composites for marine and wind applications. However, this work focused on the mechanical characterization of BFRC, obtained using vinylester resin. To assess the mechanical properties and fatigue behaviour of the BFRC, Risitano Thermographic Method (RTM) and Static Thermographic Method (STM) have been used, demonstrating their effectiveness in the rapid identification of the fatigue limit, even in the case of complex materials such as composite materials. Nomenclature A FRP Fibre-reinforced polymer BF Basalt fibre BFRC Basalt fibre reinforced composite STM Static Thermographic Method RTM Risitano Thermographic Method Thermographic Method For the mechanical characterization of BFRC specimens, energy methods have been applied, in particular the Risitano Thermographic Method (RTM) and the Static Thermographic Method (STM). RTM is a thermal analysis technique used to evaluate the stress in materials subjected to time-varying loads. It involves assessing the thermal profile of a specimen during a fatigue test and correlating surface temperature changes with mechanical deformation energy. This approach allows for a quicker determination of the fatigue limit and the Wöhler curve compared to traditional methods. The study of the method has also been extended to the static field with STM, aiming to estimate the material's fatigue limit through a standard uniaxial tensile test. As reported in literature, these two methods have been widely employed for the characterization of composite materials (Colombo et al., 2012) as well as for the study of plastic and metallic materials (D’Andrea et al., 2022; Santonocito, 2022). This paper will not delve deeply into the description of these two methods, as they are extensively documented in the literature; for detailed information, readers can consult the following references: Curti et al. (1986), La Rosa and Risitano (2000) and Santonocito et al. (2020). 2. Materials and Methods 2.1.