Carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP or CRP) is a light-weight and high strength composite material. Epoxy is most commonly used as associated bonding agent. CFRP is gaining more importance in the research field due to the emerging use in construction field mainly for strengthening of the structural elements as well as for repair and rehabilitation. Hence, detailed understanding on the interfacial behavior of the structural element- epoxy- CFRP is essential. The information available related to the interfacial behaviour of epoxy-CFRP is scarce. The CFR-Pepoxy interface region is found to be the weakest region in the matrix. This study is focused on the bonding between the interfaces of CFRP -epoxy composites. A 2D micro-level Finite Element (FE) model of transverse fibre bundle along with epoxy has been created by using the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software, ABAQUS. FEA has been conducted to understand the interfacial behavior between the matrix and their effects on strength and stiffness. The parametric analysis has been carried out considering various parameters such as thickness of the epoxy layer, number of layers and functionalized epoxy. The effects of tensile and thermal stresses on the matrix are analyzed. The thermal stress is predominant at high temperature, which is compressive in nature.

Keywords: CFRP, FEA, Interface bonding, Epoxy, Composites, Thermal stresses.