Influence of Milled carbon fiber MCF on mechanical and dynamic mechanical behaviour of carbon fiber fabric reinforced polymer composites

Abstract

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites are widely used in engineering applications. Better understanding about the thermo mechanical properties of CFRP composites are essential for their development. Static and dynamic mechanical properties of CFRP composites can be modified by the filler materials loaded on it. This study investigates the effect of Milled Carbon Fiber (MCF) filler reinforcement on flexural and thermo-mechanical properties of CFRP composites. Fabricated composites are quasi isotropic laminates with unidirectional carbon fibers. The composite laminates were fabricated by hand lay-up technique. XRD analysis illustrates that all the processed specimens are in non-crystalline nature. Three-point bending mode is followed to evaluate the flexural and Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) tests. MCF fillers are loaded at 6 wt%, 8 wt%, 10 wt%, 12 wt% to evaluate above mentioned properties, i.e, Flexural Strength and Break strain were found from flexural analysis. Storage Modulus (E'), Loss Modulus(E’'), under varying temperature and glass transition temperature (Tg) were determined from DMA. The test results indicated that, 8 wt% of MCF filler loading improves the static and dynamic mechanical properties of CFRP composites when compared to 10 wt% and 12 wt% of MCF content.