Abstract
To meet the maximum potential of the mechanical properties of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP), stress transfer between the carbon fibers through the polymer matrix must be improved. A recent promising approach reportedly used reinforcing particles as fillers dispersed in the resin. Carbon based fillers are an excellent candidate for such reinforcing particles due to their intrinsically high mechanical properties, structure and chemical nature similar to carbon fiber and high aspect ratio. They have shown great potential in increasing the strength, elastic modulus and other mechanical properties of interest of CFRPs. However, a percolation threshold of ~1% of the carbon-based particle concentration in the base resin has generally been reported, beyond which the mechanical properties deteriorate due to particle agglomeration. As a result, the potential for further increase of the mechanical properties of CFRPs with carbon-based fillers is limited. We report a significant increase in the strength and elastic modulus of CFRPs, achieved with a novel reinforced thermoset resin that contains high loadings of epoxy-reacted fluorographene (ERFG) fillers. We found that the improvement in mechanical performance of CFRPs was correlated with increase in ERFG loading in the resin. Using a novel thermoset resin containing 10 wt% ERFG filler, CFRPs fabricated by wet layup technique with twill weaves showed a 19.6% and 17.7% increase in the elastic modulus and tensile strength respectively. In addition, because of graphene’s high thermal conductivity and high aspect ratio, the novel resin enhanced CFRPs possessed 59.3% higher through-plane thermal conductivity and an 81-fold reduction in the hydrogen permeability. The results of this study demonstrate that high loadings of functionalized particles dispersed in the resin is a viable path towards fabrication of improved, high-performance CFRP parts and systems.
Highlights
IntroductionIn recent years, their application has been extended from high-end industries, like aerospace, aircraft, sports, and military to cost-sensitive industries, like automotive and energy [2]
Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics (CFRP) have been widely used as lightweight materials replacing metals because of their superior specific strength, stiffness, andFiber-Reinforced Plastic corrosion resistance [1]
In epoxy-reacted fluorographene (ERFG), the C-O-C absorptions extended the broad feature seen in amine-reacted fluorographene (ARFG) (1000 cm−1 to 1200 cm−1) to a broader range (1000 cm−1 to 1300 cm−1), which indicates the presence of epoxy groups onto the ERFG particles
Summary
In recent years, their application has been extended from high-end industries, like aerospace, aircraft, sports, and military to cost-sensitive industries, like automotive and energy [2]. Their application has been extended from high-end industries, like aerospace, aircraft, sports, and military to cost-sensitive industries, like automotive and energy [2] This new trend requires reducing the cost of parts made from CFRP. One of the key reasons for this failure is that CF has relatively low density of surface functional groups, which result in lesser surface interactions To address this problem, increasing the interface interaction through sizing, a polymer coating that improves stress transfer through chemical bond and physical interlock, is required as part of the CF manufacturing process [3]. Inspired by the sizing mechanism, rigid particles have been added either into polymer sizing or by spraying on the CFs, to encourage strong physical interlock
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