Effects of Styrene-Acrylic Sizing on the Mechanical Properties of Carbon Fiber Thermoplastic Towpregs and Their Composites

Molecules : a Journal of Synthetic Chemistry and Natural Product Chemistry
Sean BowmanYi Wei

Abstract

Thermoplastic towpregs are convenient and scalable raw materials for the fabrication of continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic matrix composites. In this paper, the potential to employ epoxy and styrene-acrylic sizing agents was evaluated for the making of carbon fiber thermoplastic towpregs via a powder-coating method. The protective effects and thermal stability of these sizing agents were investigated by single fiber tensile test and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurement. The results indicate that the epoxy sizing agent provides better protection to carbon fibers, but it cannot be used for thermoplastic towpreg processing due to its poor chemical stability at high temperature. The bending rigidity of the tows and towpregs with two styrene-acrylic sizing agents was measured by cantilever and Kawabata methods. The styrene-acrylic sized towpregs show low torque values, and are suitable for further processing, such as weaving, preforming, and winding. Finally, composite panels were fabricated directly from the towpregs by hot compression molding. Both of the composite panels show superior flexural strength (>400 MPa), flexural modulus (>63 GPa), and interlaminar shear strength (>27 MPa), indicating the applicabi...Continue Reading

References

May 26, 1961·Science·H Craig
Mar 4, 2015·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Galen GorskiGabriel J Bowen

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Citations

Nov 7, 2019·Molecules : a Journal of Synthetic Chemistry and Natural Product Chemistry·Bo WuFang He

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
sizing
differential scanning calorimetry

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