Abstract
A series of hybrid fiber-reinforced composites were prepared with polyimide fiber and carbon fiber as the reinforcement and epoxy resin as the matrix. The influence of stacking sequence on the Charpy impact and flexural properties of the composites as well as the failure modes were studied. The results showed that hybrid fiber-reinforced composites yielded nearly 50% increment in Charpy impact strength compared with the ones reinforced by carbon fiber. The flexural performance was significantly improved compared with those reinforced solely by polyimide fibers and was greatly affected by the stacking sequence. The specimens with compressive sides distributed with carbon fiber possessed higher flexural strength, while those holding a sandwich-like structure with carbon fiber filling between the outer layers displayed a higher flexural modulus.
Highlights
A typical representative of advanced composites, resin-based composites reinforced by carbon fiber with features such as being light weight and having high strength and modulus have found broad applications in the fields of upmarket sports equipment and aerospace equipment [1,2,3]
Polyimide (PI) fiber with high strength and high modulus is a kind of high-performance organic fiber that has newly emerged in recent years
We decided to explore whether PI fibers and carbon fibers could be simultaneously adopted to prepare hybrid fiber-reinforced composites (HFRP), so as to make full use of the high toughness of PI fiber to balance the stiffness and toughness of carbon fiber-reinforced composites (CFRP), and in the meantime, improve the impact resistance of composites
Summary
A typical representative of advanced composites, resin-based composites reinforced by carbon fiber with features such as being light weight and having high strength and modulus have found broad applications in the fields of upmarket sports equipment and aerospace equipment [1,2,3]. The high rigidity of carbon fiber incurs brittleness and poor toughness [4,5,6,7], which makes the composites prepared show relatively low impact resistance. Polyimide (PI) fiber with high strength and high modulus is a kind of high-performance organic fiber that has newly emerged in recent years. It has excellent mechanical properties, tolerance to high and low temperatures, environmental resistance, little moisture absorption, low dielectric, and high insulation [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. It is expected that our research can provide new design ideas for stacking sequence and material selection schemes for impact-resistant composites [23,24,25]
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