Title: Microstructural Evaluation of Aligned, Short Fiber TUFF Material

Authors: Dirk Heider, John Tierney, Mohamed A. Henchir, Verena Gargitter, Shridhar Yarlagadda, John W. Gillespie Jr., Jessica Sun, Jennifer M. Sietins, and Dan Knorr

DOI: 10.33599/nasampe/s.19.1609

Abstract: The Tailorable Universal Feedstock for Forming (TuFF) material is comprised of highly aligned discontinuous fibers that achieves a high level of mechanical properties with large in-plane extensibility for forming of complex geometries. The paper characterizes the TuFF microstructure in terms of areal weight and fiber volume fraction and statistical distributions of fiber length, fiber-fiber spacing and fiber alignment using microscopy and X-ray Computed-Tomography with custom developed algorithms for data reduction. The TuFF program has demonstrated full property translation of stiffness and strength compared to continuous prepreg (60% fiber volume fraction) when 95% of all fibers are aligned within 5° and have a minimum fiber aspect ratio (length over diameter) of 600.

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Conference: SAMPE 2019 - Charlotte, NC

Publication Date: 2019/05/20

SKU: TP19--1609

Pages: 11

Price: FREE