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Developing the next generation of single polymer/carbon fibre hybrid composite materials for automotive use - HIVOCOMP

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In this paper we present some recent results on new single polymer/carbon fibre hybrid composites. These are based on Nylon 6 (PA6) and were developed under the European FP7 HIVOCOMP project, which is funded under the topic NMP-2009-2.5-1 “Light high-performance composites” of the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. Two different strategies have been trialled for hybridisation, termed intralayer and interlayer. In the intralayer hybridisation, highly stretched PA6 tapes are co-woven with PA6/T700 carbon fibre prepreg tapes and then processed using the Leeds hot compaction process. In the interlayer technique, layers of PA6/T700 prepreg are directly bonded to sheets of single polymer PA6 composite. Adding the carbon fibre was found to always give a significant improvement in stiffness and strength at strains below the failure strain of the carbon fibre (~2%). For the intralayer (co-woven) hybridisation strategy, samples were found to be brittle in tension, that is once the carbon fibres broke, the samples as a whole broke. In bending, however, this was not the case, with the hybrid samples remaining load bearing up to a high failure strain even after the breakage of the carbon fibres. For the interlayer hybridisation, an alternative strategy was adopted, where the prepreg tapes were located on the exterior of the SRP PA6 sheets. In tensile testing this combination was found to behave in parallel, so that the composites showed ductile behaviour even after the breakage of the carbon fibres.
Book: Proc. ECCM, 15th European Conference on Composite Materials
Pages: 1 - 7
ISBN:9788888785332
Publication year:2012