Assessment of transverse impact damage in GF/EP laminates of conductive nanoparticles using electrical resistivity tomography

GF/EP composite laminates with an epoxy matrix modified by carbon black (CB) of 2.0 wt.% and copper chloride (CC) were manufactured by the vacuum assisted resin infusion (VARI) technique. The effects of CB nanoparticles and CC on improvement in Modes I and II interlaminar fracture toughness and impact damage resistance and on the electrical conductivity of GF/EP laminate composites were investigated. Delamination growth was calibrated by in situ electrical resistance changes during interlaminar fracture tests. The relationship between growth of delamination and change in electrical resistance was characterised. A damage index based on the change in electrical resistance was introduced, and a new method of electrical resistivity tomography was developed to access transverse impact damage in GF/EP laminates based on a matrix of conductive points in both in-plane and through-thickness directions. The damage images from in-plane and through-thickness electrical resistivity tomography were finally estimated with the corresponding C-scan.     

Structurally stitched NCF CFRP laminates. Part 2: Finite element unit cell based prediction of in-plane strength

Based on experimental investigations on structurally stitched non-crimp fabric (NCF) carbon fiber/epoxy laminates under in-plane tension, compression and shear loading [1], a finite element based unit cell model was developed to estimate the in-plane strength of NCF laminates taking into consideration the yarn diameter, the stitching pattern and direction as well as the load type. Depending on these parameters, regions with undisturbed and disturbed fiber orientations leading to resin pockets as well as local changes of the fiber volume fraction are taken into account in the model.The comparison of experimental and numerical results showed that the strength of structurally stitched NCF laminates under in-plane tension, compression or shear loading can be predicted with an acceptable accuracy. The overall mean deviation between simulation and experiment observed was between 8% and 13%.     

Modelling microscopic flow in woven fabric reinforcements and its application in dual-scale resin infusion modelling

A physical unit cell impregnation model is proposed for the micro-scale flow in plain woven reinforcements. The modelling results show a characteristic relationship between tow impregnation speed, the surrounding local macro-scale resin pressure and the tow saturation within the unit cell. This relationship has been formulated into a mathematical algorithm which can be directly incorporated into a continuum dual-scale model to predict the ‘sink’ term. The results using the dual-scale model show a sharp resin front in inter-tow-pore spaces and a partially saturated front region in intra-tow-pore spaces. This demonstrates that the impregnation of fibre tows lags behind the resin front in the macro pore spaces. The modelling results are in agreement with two reported experimental observations. It has been shown that the unsaturated region at the flow front could increase or have a fixed length under different circumstances. These differences are due to the variation in tow impregnation speed (or the time required for the tow to become fully impregnated), the weave architecture and the nesting and packing of plies. The modelling results have also demonstrated the drooping of the inlet pressure when flow is carried out under constant injection rates. The implementation of the algorithm into a dual-scale model shows coherence with a single-scale unsaturated model, but demonstrates an advantage in flexibility, precision and convenience in application.     

The impact of air evacuation on the impregnation time of Out-of-Autoclave prepregs

Most Out-of-Autoclave prepregs (OoA) are only partially impregnated with resin. Their impregnation completes during the cure cycle, solely driven by the difference between atmospheric and vacuum pressure. Increased part length leads to an impregnation time gradient caused by the transient air flow inside the fibrous medium. In this work, a novel numerical approach capable of predicting the local impregnation time of a fibrous domain with resin, at isothermal conditions, under the influence of transient air flow, is proposed (delayed air evacuation). Sensitivity studies prove the robustness of the numerical scheme, for a large range of flow time-scales. The same approach is used to predict the local impregnation time of a commercial OoA prepreg tow, for a wide range of part lengths. It is demonstrated that for manufacturing long parts OoA, accurately capturing the influence of the air pressure on the local impregnation state of the tow, is important for quantifying the risk for residual tow porosity.     

Internal geometry of woven composite laminates with “fuzzy” carbon nanotube grafted fibers

Radially aligned carbon nanotubes (A-CNTs) grown on micron-scale fibers promise structural composites with high mechanical performance and multi-functional properties. Changes in the internal structure of woven composite laminates after A-CNT growth are studied here utilizing micro-computed tomography. The laminates are produced by vacuum impregnation in a closed mold with and without clamping pressure. Two A-CNT lengths are investigated: 4–6 μm and 17–19 μm. A-CNTs were found to increase the distance between fibers, scaled by the A-CNT length. This “swelling” resulted in an increased cross-sectional area, crimp and in-plane misalignment of the yarns. The laminate thickness doubled for laminates with long A-CNTs compared to shorter ones. The laminate with long A-CNTs produced under pressure showed a remarkable alteration of the internal structure. Fibers migrated within the fabric plane, filling almost completely the resin rich pockets. Further research is needed to understand the effect of these changes on the composite mechanical performance.     

Structurally stitched NCF CFRP laminates. Part 1: Experimental characterization of in-plane and out-of-plane properties

The insertion of local through-thickness reinforcements into dry fiber preforms by stitching provides a possibility to improve the mechanical performance of polymer-matrix composites perpendicular to the laminate plane (out-of-plane). Three-dimensional stress states can be sustained by stitching yarns, leading to increased out-of-plane properties, such as impact resistance and damage tolerance. On the other hand, 3D reinforcements induce dislocations of the in-plane fibers causing fiber waviness and the formation of resin pockets in the stitch vicinity after resin infusion which may reduce the in-plane stiffness and strength properties of the laminate.In the present paper an experimental study on the influence of varying stitching parameters on in-plane and out-of-plane properties of non-crimp fabric (NCF) carbon fiber/epoxy laminates is presented, namely, shear modulus and strength as well as compression after impact (CAI) strength and mode I energy release rate. The direction of stitching, thread diameter, spacing and pitch length as well as the direction of loading (which is to be interpreted as the direction of the three rail shear loading or the direction of crack propagation in case of mode 1 energy release rate testing) were varied, and their effect on the mechanical properties was evaluated statistically.The stitching parameters were found to have ambivalent effect on the mechanical properties. Larger thread diameters and increased stitch densities result in enhanced CAI strengths and energy release rates but deteriorate the in-plane properties of the laminate. On the other hand, a good compromise between both effects can be found with a proper selection of the stitching configurations.     

Data assimilation through integration of stochastic resin flow simulation with visual observation during vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding: A numerical study

This study investigated data assimilation through integration of visual observation with a stochastic numerical simulation of resin flow during vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding. The data assimilation was performed using the four-dimensional asynchronous ensemble square root filter and a stochastic numerical simulation by means of the Karhunen–Loève expansion of the permeability field. Through numerical experiments of linear flow, it was verified that the estimation accuracy of the resin impregnation behavior improved compared to that when using conventional data assimilation and that the permeability field could be estimated simultaneously, although it is not explicitly related to the observation. We also investigated the applicability of the proposed method to radial-injection VaRTM by varying the model thickness. The proposed method successfully estimated the resin impregnation behavior and permeability field. Additionally, the required condition for the number of ensemble members was clarified.     

Enhanced delamination initiation stress and monitoring sensitivity of quasi-isotropic laminates under in-plane tension by interleaving with CNT buckypaper

Delamination initiation and the corresponding in-situ monitoring method have been investigated for a T300/epoxy quasi-isotropic laminate. Interfaces of the laminate, in which the delamination tends to occur under in-plane tensile load, have been interleaved with porous carbon nanotube (CNT) buckypapers. Both sectional loading to the delamination initiation and full tension to the fracture of specimens were performed to evaluate the reinforced effect and self-sensing properties of the CNT buckypapers on the laminates. As expected, enhanced delamination initiation stress level was obtained, improved by 7.7% compared with that of the base laminate. Simultaneously, electrical resistance and acoustic emission (AE) responses of the laminates were also measured and used to determine the initiation of delamination. The tests have exhibited that the CNT buckypapers have significant influence on the resistance change of the laminate, showing potential to be used as a detector. This study has preliminarily demonstrated that the CNT buckypapers can serve as both sensing and strengthening constituent.     

Health monitoring of cross-ply laminates: Modelling the correlation between damage evolution and electrical resistance change

In this work an analytical solution is developed to accurately predict the stiffness reduction in conductive cross-ply laminates, caused by matrix cracking in the transverse layers, as a function of the electrical resistance change of the laminate itself.To this end a closed form solution is initially developed with the aim to link the density of transverse cracks to the electric resistance of the cross-ply laminate. Such an expression is later used within a further model which allows the stiffness degradation associated to a given crack density to be estimated.The accuracy of the proposed model is verified by comparison with a bulk of FE analyses.     

Failure analysis of fiber-reinforced composite laminates subjected to biaxial loads

A nonlinear constitutive model for a single lamina is proposed for the failure analysis of composite laminates. In the material model, both fiber and matrix are assumed to behave as elastic-plastic and the in-plane shear is assumed to behave nonlinearly with a variable shear parameter. The damage onset for individual lamina is detected by a mixed failure criterion, composed of the Tsai-Wu criterion and the maximum stress criterion. After damage takes place within the lamina, the fiber and in-plane shear are assumed to exhibit brittle behavior, and the matrix is assumed to exhibit degrading behavior. The proposed nonlinear constitutive model is tested against experimental data and good agreement is obtained. Then, numerical analyses are carried out to study the failure behavior of symmetric angle-ply composite laminates and symmetric cross-ply composite laminates subjected to biaxial loads. Finally, the conclusions obtained from the numerical analysis are given.     

Influence of fabric shear and flow direction on void formation during resin transfer molding

In resin transfer molding, void type defect is one of common process problems, it degenerates the mechanical performances of the final products seriously. Void content prediction has become a research hotspot in RTM, while the void formation when the flow direction and the tow direction are not identical or the fabric is sheared has not been studied to date. In this paper, based on the analysis of the resin flow velocities inside and outside fiber tows, a mathematical model to describe the formation of micro- and meso-scale-voids has been developed. Particular attention has been paid on the influence of flow direction and fabric shear on the impregnation of the unit cell, so their effects on the generation and size of voids have been obtained. Experimental validation has been conducted by measuring the formation and size of voids, a good agreement between the model prediction and experimental results has been found.     

Continuous monitoring of three-dimensional resin flow through a fibre preform

A basic requirement for an accurate numerical simulation of the resin transfer moulding process is a set of exact permeability coefficients of the applied textile reinforcement. The permeabilities are usually obtained from the measurement of flow front propagation through a stack of planar fibre preforms. While measuring the in-plane flow is considered as rather simple, the detection of a flow front that moves perpendicular to the laminate plane emerges to be difficult. Therefore, the knowledge of the transverse impregnation behaviour is still sparse and transverse permeability values were determined for a very few fabrics only. The knowledge of an exact transverse permeability is important for the three-dimensional simulation of flow through thick sectioned parts and for specific RTM-related processes like resin film infusion or SCRIMP^®. This paper addresses the monitoring of flow front propagation utilizing ultrasound transmission. A testing rig was developed for monitoring three-dimensional ellipsoidal impregnation, which is induced by point injection. Two multidirectional non-crimped fabrics were characterised by the three-dimensional measurement. For the determination of the transverse permeability the three-dimensional filling was emulated by a numerical flow simulation software.     

Local buckling of stitched composite laminate

Due to relatively low interlaminar strength, delamination is a common failure mode of composite laminates. Through-thickness stitching is shown to improve the delamination resistance of laminated composites. Under in-plane compressive loading, significant strength reduction occurs due to coupling between delamination and delamination buckling. In this paper, an energy-based model was developed to predict the effect of critical stitching parameters on the delamination buckling strength of stitched laminates. Excellent agreement was found between the model results and a corresponding finite element analysis.     

Measuring the impregnation of an out-of-autoclave prepreg by micro-CT

Resin flow into dry reinforcement regions is the main microstructural change during the processing of out-of-autoclave prepregs and influences air evacuation and void suppression. Such impregnation flow was investigated experimentally during the processing of a second-generation out-of-autoclave prepreg. First, laminates were partially processed to different stages of a simple cure cycle. Then, samples from each laminate were scanned using X-ray microtomography (micro-CT) to obtain 3D microstructural data. This data was used to investigate the initial microstructure of the material and measure the extent of impregnation at each processing stage, the rate of impregnation, and the evolution of macro-porosity within the material.     

Effect of room-temperature out-time on tow impregnation in an out-of-autoclave prepreg

Tow impregnation as a function of material out-time was investigated for an out-of-autoclave carbon fiber–epoxy prepreg. Prepreg was aged at ambient temperature for 56 days. Every 7 days, laminates were laid up and cured using vacuum bag only processing. Void content was calculated through image analysis of polished sections. Experimental results were used to validate an analytical model for tow impregnation. Model predictions were based on flow kinetics during processing conditions, taking into account increasing degree of cure and evolution of resin viscosity as a function of ambient aging time. The study found that no significant tow porosity occurred within the material’s stated out-life, that tow porosity increased once this out-life was exceeded and eventually stabilized due to the room-temperature vitrification of the resin. The model’s predicted trends were consistent with experimental results, suggesting that an increase in resin viscosity is indeed the main cause of out-time induced tow porosity and providing a means of predicting laminate quality as a function of room temperature aging time.     

Three-dimensional reconstruction of resin flow using capacitance sensor data assimilation during a liquid composite molding process: A numerical study

Liquid composite molding (LCM) is a method to manufacture fiber-reinforced composites, where dry fabric reinforcement is impregnated with a resin in a molding apparatus. However, the inherent process variability changes resin flow patterns during mold filling, which in turn may cause void formation. We propose a method to reconstruct three-dimensional resin flow in LCM, without embedding sensors into the composite structure. Capacitance measured from pairs of electrodes on molding tools and the stochastic simulation of resin flow during an LCM process are integrated by a sequential data assimilation method based on the ensemble Kalman filter; then, three-dimensional resin flow and permeability distribution are estimated simultaneously. The applicability of this method is investigated by numerical experiments, characterized by different spatial distributions of permeability. We confirmed that changes in resin flow caused by spatial permeability variations could be captured and the spatial distribution of permeability could be estimated by the proposed method.     

Thermoplastic polymer impregnation of cellulose nanofibre networks: Morphology,mechanical and optical properties

Biobased nanocomposite sheets of cellulose nanofibres (CNF) and cellulose acetate butyrate (CAB) were prepared using resin impregnation. Porous nanofibre networks together with a low viscosity thermoplastic resin were the key elements in the processing. SEM images of the network before the impregnation showed high porosity and after the impregnation indicated impregnated fibre network. A significant improvement in the visible light transmittance was observed for the nanocomposite compared to the nanofibre network, which is explained on the filling of the pores with a transparent matrix. The tensile tests showed an increase of 364% and 145% for stiffness and strength respectively for nanocomposites with 60 wt.% CNF when compared to CAB. Dynamic mechanical properties showed a good interaction between the CAB and cellulose nanofibres. These results show that CAB impregnated cellulose nanofibre networks are promising biocomposite that could be used in applications where transparency and good mechanical properties are of interest.     

Experimental determination and modeling of thermal conductivity tensor of carbon/epoxy composite

The modeling of thermal behavior of composite parts during their forming requires an accurate knowledge of their thermo-physical properties. Because of the heterogeneous nature of composites, the thermal conductivity tensor appears to be the most tricky to determine experimentally but also to model. A wide range of experimental methods can be found in the literature in order to measure either in-plane or transverse conductivity of composite parts, but very few succeed in performing it on dry preform or uncured laminates. In this study, the effective thermal conductivity tensor of carbon/epoxy laminates is investigated experimentally in the three states of a typical LCM-process: dry-reinforcement, raw and cured composite. Samples are made of twill-weave carbon fabric impregnated with epoxy resin. The transverse thermal conductivity is determined using a classical estimation algorithm, whereas a special testing apparatus is designed to estimate in-plane conductivity for different temperatures and different states of the composite. Experimental results are then compared to modified Charles & Wilson and Maxwell models. The fiber crimping of a ply is also taken into account in modeling. The comparison shows clearly that these models can be used to predict the effective thermal conductivities of woven-reinforced composites provided that the material properties are well known.     

Mechanical behavior of Kevlar/basalt reinforced polypropylene composites

In this study, mechanical behavior of thermoplastic composites reinforced with two-dimensional plain woven homogeneous and hybrid fabrics of Kevlar/basalt yarns was studied. Five types (two homogeneous and three hybrids) of composite laminates were manufactured using compression molding technique with polypropylene (PP) resin. Static tensile and in-plane compression tests were carried out to evaluate the mechanical properties of the laminates. The tension and in-plane compression tests had shown that the composites with the combination of Kevlar and basalt yarns present better tensile and in-plane compressive behavior as compared to their base composites. Improvement in the properties such as elastic modulus, strength and failure strain in both tension and in-plane compression was observed due to the hybridization. Numerical simulations were performed in ABAQUS/Standard by implementing a user-defined material subroutine (VUMAT) based on Chang-Chang criteria. Good agreement between the experimental and numerical simulations was achieved in terms of damage patterns.     

Simulating tape resin infiltration during thermoset pultrusion process

The thermoset tape pultrusion is a widely adopted manufacturing process to produce long, constant cross-section composite structural parts. For high volume production, low cost can be achieved by maximizing the production rate which is a function of the material and process parameters, more specifically the rate of resin infiltration and resin cure. During resin infiltration, the resin saturates the dry reinforcement either under positive pressure in the pressure chamber, or, by the action of capillary and surface forces, within the resin bath. In either case, the saturation must be completed as the tape is squeezed into the final cross-sectional form at the entrance of the heated mold where the resin will be cured to form the composite part.This paper models the resin infiltration process during pultrusion, by modifying the pre-existing simulation tool for liquid molding processes. The formulated capability can be used not only to optimize the impregnation dynamics within the pressure chamber, but can also be used to predict the required forces for the selected pulling rate. The proposed model does allow one to handle a variety of tape cross-sections, not just rectangular prisms.