Tailored fibre placement of carbon fibre rovings for reinforced polypropylene composite part 1: PP infusion of carbon reinforcement

Abstract

Abstract Tailored fibre placement was utilised to create carbon fibre composite preforms, the preforms were impregnated with polypropylene (PP) through different methods and then was heat pressed into the final composite form. This part of the research focussed on three impregnation techniques; layered melt infusion, use of comingled rovings and PP dispersion using a PP emulsion product, the mechanical properties of the resultant composites were assessed. It was found that melt infusion of PP layers under the processing conditions did not allow satisfactory migration of PP through the preform, and that this had a strong negative effect on the bending strength of these composites. It was observed that preforms made using comingled yarns had a lower void volume. Composites with a combination of comingled rovings and emulsion deposited PP showed the highest bending strength. Interestingly the highest tensile strength was shown from composites made from pure carbon fibre rovings (i.e. not comingled) and emulsion PP deposit.