Alignment of discontinuous recycled carbon fibre

Kok H. Wong, Thomas A. Turner, Stephen J. Pickering

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Fibre recycled from end-of-life composites is generally discontinuous and randomly orientated. An intermediate conversion process is required to improve its physical form to make it more readily applicable for use in the composites industry. Non-woven mat manufactured from conventional papermaking processes is one of the direct usages for the recycled fibre. However, due to the 2-D random fibre structure, practical fibre volume content is limited to less than 20% at 10bar pressure. Higher volume content can be obtained with greater moulding pressure but this will result in excessive damage to the fibre length, reducing the fibre reinforcement efficiency. In this paper, a novel alignment process is devised for converting discontinuous random recycled carbon fibre into mat with a highly aligned orientation distribution. This allows composite with higher fibre volume content to be achieved at much lower moulding pressure. A further benefit is that degradation of fibre length is then kept to a minimum. Compression test on dry mats have been performed to determine the change in fibre volume content with the applied pressure. The benefit of having the aligned structure on length preservation will be quantified via an image analysis method. The process also capable of producing aligned mat with high areal density and this help improving production efficiency by reducing number of plies required for part manufacture. Effect of higher area density on alignment quality will be reported.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSAMPE Seattle 2014 International Conference and Exhibition
PublisherSoc. for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering
ISBN (Electronic)9781934551165
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes
EventSAMPE Tech Seattle 2014 Conference - Seattle, United States
Duration: 2 Jun 20145 Jun 2014

Publication series

NameInternational SAMPE Technical Conference

Conference

ConferenceSAMPE Tech Seattle 2014 Conference
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySeattle
Period2/06/145/06/14

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Materials Science
  • Mechanics of Materials
  • Mechanical Engineering

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