Title: Impregnation of High-Rate Carbon Fiber Composites

Authors: Alex M. Reichanadter, Jan-Anders E. Mansson

DOI: 10.33599/nasampe/c.22.0177

Abstract: Traditional carbon fibers are expensive to produce because of the costly precursor production and carbonization step. Significant cost savings can be achieved by varying the manufacturing conditions during the precursor production. These efforts have resulted in a relatively inexpensive fiber with comparable mechanical properties to standard modulus carbon fiber. However, the resulting fiber cross-sections were irregular and resembled a kidney-bean shape. The irregularity of the cross-sectional shape raised concerns over the downstream processing steps for polymer composites. The fiber bed permeability is a critical value to determine the infiltration time needed for prepregging or other resin infiltration processes. In this study, flow simulations were performed on regularly packed kidney-bean shaped fibers to determine the transverse permeability. The flow simulations considered unit cell fiber volume fractions from 0.30 – 0.75. Three flow directions were considered for each unit-cell of 0°, +90°, and -90° because of the anisotropy in the fiber cross-sectional shape. Additionally, the asymmetry resulted in two valid hexagonal packing arrangements, where a kidney-bean shaped fiber could pack more efficiently than a circular fiber, 0.923 vs 0.907. When comparing the permeability of the hexagonally packed kidney-bean shaped fibers to hexagonally packed circular fibers, a reduction in transverse permeability up 74% was observed. This reduction in permeability was noted for the +/-90° unit cell orientations, while the 0° orientation had comparable permeability to circular fibers. This was an important finding because kidney-bean shaped carbon fiber may have an infiltration process time up to 4 times longer than for more conventional circular fibers.

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Conference: CAMX 2022

Publication Date: 2022/10/17

SKU: TP22-0000000177

Pages: 13

Price: $26.00