Application of cold plasma technology in fiber-reinforced composite materials

摘要

A study is presented concerning a cold plasma technique for improving the bondability of highstrength high-modulus multi-filament polyethylene fibers to polymer matrices and the fibers impregnation with the objective to fabricate composite materials (CMs). Strong bonding between the matrixes and reinforcing fibers during the production of composites appears in the case if interaction is chemical. The value of the activation energy of the chemical interaction for very high performance polyethylene fiber was estimated. It was 1.14 eV. This allows using the cold plasma technique for producing CMs. In order to understand the effect of cold plasma treatment treated and untreated fibers were used to fabricate CMs. The strong bond between the matrix and plasma-activated fibers affects both the properties and failure mode of composite. The properties and failure modes were compared to those of CMs reinforced with untreated fibers. After plasma treatment the properties of CMs are increased. CMs are broken as a unit whole under tension. The ideas of the activating the fibers by cold plasma treatment above the activation energy of the chemical interaction may be extended over other types of the fibers and matrices to produce new types of fiber-reinforced composite materials with high physicomechanical indices.