Abstract
Applications of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) at temperatures over 150–200 °C are becoming common in aerospace and automotive applications. Exposure of CFRP to these temperatures can lead to permanent changes in their mechanical properties. In this work, we investigated the effect of thermal ageing in air on the strength of carbon fabric/epoxy composites. To this end, accelerated artificial ageing at different temperatures was performed on carbon fabric/epoxy specimens. The flexural and interlaminar shear strengths of the aged specimens were assessed by three-point bending and short beam shear tests, respectively, and compared to those of unaged samples. For ageing at temperatures below the glass transition temperature of the resin, , a moderate reduction of strength was found, with a maximum decrease of 25% for 2160 h at 75% . On the other hand, a rapid strength decrease was observed for ageing temperatures above . This was attributed to degradation of the epoxy matrix and of the fibre/epoxy interface. In particular, a 30% strength decrease was found for less than 6 h at 145% . Therefore, it was concluded that even a short exposure to operating temperatures above could substantially impair the load-carrying capability of CFRP components.
Highlights
Composite materials have been widely adopted in a number of applications in the automotive and aerospace industry
We investigated the effect of thermal ageing in air on the strength of carbon fabric/epoxy composites
A clear effect of thermal ageing on weight loss is visible for higher temperatures
Summary
Composite materials have been widely adopted in a number of applications in the automotive and aerospace industry. Due to their high strength-to-weight ratio, Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) are attractive for lightweight components such as aircraft panels, car parts, and cables [1,2,3,4,5]. Carbon/epoxy composites stand out for their excellent mechanical properties. One of their main drawbacks is their decreasing mechanical performance with temperature increase which, combined with their low thermal conductivity, makes them much more susceptible to heating than traditional metallic materials. Accurate assessment of the mechanical properties of the material aged under these conditions is of paramount importance for the design of composite structures [6,7,8]
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