Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Phenolic Composites Reinforced with Hybrid of Spun and Continuous Carbon Fabrics

Abstract

The mechanical and thermal properties of continuous carbon fabric/spun carbon fabric interply hybrid composite materials have been studied. The hybrid composites with continuous carbon fabric of high tensile, flexural strength and spun carbon fabric of better interlaminar shear strength and lower thermal conductivity are investigated in terms of mechanical properties as well as thermal properties. Through hybridization, tensile strength and modulus of the spun reinforced composites were increased by about 28% and 20%, respectively. The hybrid composite also shows better interlaminar shear strength than continuous carbon reinforced composites. The thermal conductivity of the hybrid composite is lower approximately only 4˜8% along the in-plane direction than that of the continuous carbon reinforced composite. The transverse thermal conductivity of the hybrid composite decreases with increasing continuous carbon fiber volume fraction. We predicted the thermal conductivity oftextile composites using thermal-electrical analogy. The predicted thermal conductivities showed good agreement with experimental results. The erosion rate and insulation index were calculated through torch test. The spun reinforced composite has a higher insulation index than the continuous carbon reinforced composite and hybrid composites over the entire range of the back-face temperature of the specimen. The different stacking sequence has influence on the insulation index and erosion rate of hybrid composites.