Quantification of the void content of composite materials using soft X-ray transmittance

Abstract

Carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastics (CFRTPs) have high potential in high-cycle (1 min) molding as a weight-reducing material for the mass production of automobile components. However, residual voids in CFRTPs lead to diminished and unstable mechanical properties; therefore, the effective quantification of the void content in CFRTP products is necessary for developing an affordable system for mass production. In a previous study, we demonstrated that the X-ray attenuation coefficient decreases with increasing void content; thus, measurements of X-ray attenuation coefficients can be used to estimate the void contents of CFRTPs. In this study, we first investigated in detail the soft X-ray attenuation coefficients of completely impregnated composite materials with three different thicknesses; we observed that the attenuation coefficients decreased with increasing composite thickness, even though they should be independent of the thickness according to the Beer–Lambert law. We next demonstrated that although no correlation exists between the X-ray transmittance and the apparent attenuation coefficient of six composites with various void contents, the true attenuation coefficient modified to account for void content exhibits a good linear relationship with the X-ray transmittance, same as fully impregnated composites. Using the approximation line between the X-ray transmittance and the modified attenuation coefficient of CFRTP, we estimated the void content on the basis of the difference between the apparent and true X-ray attenuation coefficients. The average difference in void content determined by conventional hydrostatic weighing and that determined by the proposed X-ray transmittance method was 0.43%. We therefore concluded that the void content of CFRTPs of any thickness can be estimated nondestructively using soft X-rays.