gel coat

On Thursday, October 24, 2019 at 10:15:44 AM UTC-4, Tango Eight wrote:
On Wednesday, October 23, 2019 at 4:45:51 PM UTC-4, Charlie Quebec wrote:
I know of several cases where the top layers of glass had to be replaced due to crack propagation. This was only confirmed by dry penetration testing.

I'd like to see those results.

T8

That makes 2 of us. The reason may (may) be because it's just easier to achieve a smooth finish by peeling off the top layer and replacing rather than structural concerns.

Back in the dark ages when I was in school (30 years ago), the materials science lab had an ongoing experiment related to aging of gelcoated fiberglass. At that time (around the same time as the Aussie report), I believe they had yet to see any significant degradation of structural properties even with significant failures of the gelcoat. In fact, I believe (can't recall exactly) that the test surface was taken from a wrecked glider!) I'll see if I can dig up the professor's name and see if there was any output published.

p3