Abstract
For mass production of structural composites, use of different textile patterns, custom preforming, room temperature cure high performance polymers and simplistic manufacturing approaches are desired. Woven fabrics are widely used for infusion processes owing to their high permeability but their localised mechanical performance is affected due to inherent associated crimps. The current investigation deals with manufacturing low-weight textile carbon non-crimp fabrics (NCFs) composites with a room temperature cure epoxy and a novel liquid Methyl methacrylate (MMA) thermoplastic matrix, Elium®. Vacuum assisted resin infusion (VARI) process is chosen as a cost effective manufacturing technique. Process parameters optimisation is required for thin NCFs due to intrinsic resistance it offers to the polymer flow. Cycles of repetitive manufacturing studies were carried out to optimise the NCF-thermoset (TS) and NCF with novel reactive thermoplastic (TP) resin. It was noticed that the controlled and optimised usage of flow mesh, vacuum level and flow speed during the resin infusion plays a significant part in deciding the final quality of the fabricated composites. The material selections, the challenges met during the manufacturing and the methods to overcome these are deliberated in this paper. An optimal three stage vacuum technique developed to manufacture the TP and TS composites with high fibre volume and lower void content is established and presented.
Highlights
Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics (CFRPs) composites offer higher specific properties compared to other classes of composite materials
The scope of this paper is to present a way of processing dry carbon non-crimp fabrics (NCFs) thin
The present research gives the details of the process parameters for manufacturing thick and thin carbon NCFs with epoxy and liquid Methyl methacrylate (MMA) thermoplastic resin using Vacuum assisted resin infusion (VARI)
Summary
Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics (CFRPs) composites offer higher specific properties compared to other classes of composite materials. Manufacturing and properties of the overall composite system is a function of two building blocks, i.e., fibres and the matrix. Usually the woven carbon fabrics are very appealing and continuously used owing to ease of handling, processability using liquid infusion methods and higher specific properties. Non Crimp Fabrics (NCFs) made of several dry UD plies stitched together offer new possibilities in processing as several plies can be stacked at once. It reduces resin rich areas and stress concentrations that can be found in woven fabrics [2]. NCFs can be combined with the use of spread tows to manufacture so called thin plies that have fibre areal weight (FAW) lower than 150 g/m2 and that can go down to 30 g/m2
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