A structure for a composite of fibre-metal laminate (FML) has been proposed, hich is composed of reinforcing fibre bundles, thermoplastic resin as the matrix and metal plates. The reinforcing fibre bundles are discontinuous, and are intentionally overlapped in the longitudinal direction. The resin including fibre bundles was sandwiched between the metal plates. The application concept for the industry is composed of three stages. At the 1st stage,
FML is fabricated by lamination of reinforcing fibre bundles, thermoplastic resin and metal plates. At the 2nd stage, FML is formed into the final shape of the product by secondary forming processes, such as stretching or bending under a heated condition which melts the thermo resin. At the 3rd stage, the formed product is expected to have high strength. In the present paper, the effect of heating temperature on the deformation of FML at the 2nd stage
was clarified. Firstly, the numerical examination was shown on the effect of overlap length on the fracture mode and the reinforcing mechanism in the proposed FML. Based on the result, the minimum bare length for the overlapped part for the discontinuous fibre bundles was determined so that the tensile strength might be as high as that with FMLs with continuous fibre bundles at the 3rd stage. Finally actual FML was experimentally fabricated, and subjected to all though the 1st to 3rd stages to verify the efficiency of the FML. In particular, the effect of heating temperature was focused upon to realize the forming process at the 2nd stage
