Effect of ply thickness on tensile and bending performances of carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic unidirectional laminate

Abstract

It has been explored that thin ply would improve the mechanical performances of carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composites laminate. It has not been known whether there are similar effects on thermoplastic composites. In this article, carbon fiber reinforced polyamide 6 (CF/PA6) unidirectional fabrics with two thicknesses of 0.045 and 0.105 mm were used to fabricate the unidirectional laminate (UDL). Tensile and bending behaviors of the UDL were recorded with a digital image correlation (DIC) system, their damage macromorphologies were observed with high-speed camera during loading. The fracture microstructures of the samples were observed with SEM and optic microscope. The results showed that the tensile and bending strengths of the samples with 0.045 mm thick are 79.8% and 24.8% higher than that with 0.105 mm thick. Thinning ply can inhibit the crack expanding, and the time from crack originating to fracture of the sample is larger than that of the thick ply one. Morphologies of the fractures revealed that the crack mainly expanded in the matrix along the loading direction for thin-ply laminate, while the crack developed in the fiber cluster for thick-ply laminate. The results also revealed that the mechanical properties of the laminate can be improved obviously by using thin-ply.

Study on tensile properties of ultra‐thin‐ply carbon fiber‐reinforced composite laminates under static load

“…The longitudinal tensile strength of unidirectional laminates shows no significant correlation with the ply thickness, whereas the strength and initial damage stress of ultra‐thin‐ply quasi‐isotropic laminates are significantly higher than those of laminates with higher ply thicknesses 17 . Moreover, the strength advantage is observed in various fiber‐reinforced composite material systems 17–19 . Ultra‐thin‐ply composites also demonstrate strength advantages in interlaminar shear, 7 open‐hole laminates, 20 and filled‐hole structures 21,22 .…”

“…17 Moreover, the strength advantage is observed in various fiber-reinforced composite material systems. [17][18][19] Ultra-thin-ply composites also demonstrate strength advantages in interlaminar shear, 7 open-hole laminates, 20 and filled-hole structures. 21,22 Reducing the ply thickness of composites can delay the initiation and propagation of interlaminar and intralaminar cracks.…”

Investigation of structure–flexural response relations in thermoplastic carbon/glass fiber‐metal laminates

“…Thermoplastic resins including polypropylene (PP) and polyamide 6 (PA6) have been extensively used as automobile materials with low material cost, recyclability, and high molding efficiency. 22,23 Therefore, the continuous glass fiber-reinforced PP (PP/GF) and carbon fiber-reinforced PA6 (PA6/CF) are excellent candidates for the development of thermoplastic fiber-metal hybrid laminates. [24][25][26] In general, metal sheets possess better ductility while the fiber-reinforced composite layers show a higher strength.…”

Effects of ambient humidity and sintering temperature on the tribological and antistatic properties of PEEK and CF/PEEK

“…In order to improve its comprehensive performances, the most effective method is to compound the material (Abdul, 2021;Li et al, 2021;He et al, 2022;Huang et al, 2022). Carbon fiber (CF) has excellent properties such as wear resistance, high electrical conductivity (Bijwe et al, 2013;Guo et al, 2017), which is widely used as a reinforcement material and is often doped with resin to prepare high-performance composite materials (Qiu et al, 2021).…”