IMPROVEMENT OF IMPREGNATION AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF CFRTP COMPOSITES BY MICRO-BRAIDED YARNS

摘要

The fabrication of continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic composite involves two problems. The first one is that thermoplastics as matrices generally have high melt viscosity so that it is difficult to impregnate resin into reinforcing fiber bundle. To overcome this problem, microbraided yarn (MBY) with CF and thermoplastic fiber have been developed as an intermediate material by Japanese traditional braiding technique as shown in Fig. 1. MBY is fabricated by braiding resin fibers alongside reinforcement fiber. Since resin fibers are located close to reinforcement fiber bundle, impregnation performance of thermoplastics is excellent [1]. The other one is low interfacial properties between the fiber and matrix. It is considered that interfacial properties in continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites can be characterized by the wetting ability and chemical interaction between fiber and matrix. Wetting ability would affect resin impregnation state during molding while chemical reaction affects composite strength. Therefore, interface design of CFRTP is very important to obtain composite materials with improved processability and mechanical performance.