Not an expert, but if you take a fiberglass panel with gel coat and stress it moderately, the fiberglass will bend and flex without damage and the gelcoat will crack. This is generally a non-issue on boats. My understanding is that this is why stress fractures in the gel coat such as corners of a cockpit are typically cosmetic, not necessarily structural issues. They however are good indicators of where stress is occurring.
My most recent experience of this is with fiberglass gliders (the planes) where flexing of the structure eventually leads to cosmetic crazing of the gelcoat while the underlying fiberglass or carbon is still sound. It is an advantage of gel coated gliders over painted ones in that you can see when they have been subject to stress because the gelcoat cracks!
My concern for II is that some parts of intelligent infusion involve bending green fiberglass panels and I suspect if they were gelcoated the gelcoat would crack.
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Posted by: markm@snowgum.com
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