Investigation of the shear properties of 3D printed short carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites

Short fiber-reinforced 3D printed components are high performance materials with a wide range of potential applications in various industries ranging from aerospace to automotive. Mechanical characterization of 3D printed short carbon fiber polyethylene terephthalate and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene parts are presented under the application of shear load in this study. The anisotropy properties of both composite and polymer materials were investigated by printing samples at two different orientations, using fused deposition modeling (FDM) technique. The fabricated samples were subjected to tensile and shearing loads while 2D digital image correlation (DIC) was used to measure full-field strain on the specimen. The obtained results revealed a noticeable anisotropy in shear properties as the function of printing orientation. Moreover, it found that using carbon fiber-reinforced PET results in higher elastic modulus, tensile, and shear strengths up to 180%, 230%, and 40% compared to ABS.

Overmolding of Hybrid Long and Short Carbon Fiber Polypropylene Composite: Optimizing Processing Parameters

Injection overmolding was used to produce hybrid unidirectional continuous-short carbon fiber reinforced polypropylene. Polypropylene pellets containing short carbon fibers were melted and overmolded on unidirectional carbon fibers, which act as the core of the composite structure. Four factors were varied in this study: fiber pretension applied to unidirectional fibers, injection pressure, melting temperature, and backpressure used for melting and injecting the composite pellet. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of these factors on fiber volume fraction, flexural strength, and impact strength of the hybrid composite. The relationship between factors and responses was analyzed using Box–Behnken Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Each aspect was divided into three levels. There were 27 experimental runs carried out, with three replicated center points. The results showed that the injection molding process parameters had no significant effect on the fiber’s volume fraction. On the other hand, melting temperature and fiber pretension significantly affected impact strength and flexural strength.

Manufacturing process of short carbon fiber reinforced Al matrix with preformless and their properties

The conventional manufacturing process of fiber-reinforced metal matrix composites via liquid infiltration processes, preform manufacturing using inorganic binders is essential. However, the procedure involves binder sintering, which requires high energy and long operating times. A new fabrication process without preform manufacturing is proposed to fabricate short carbon fiber (SCF)-reinforced aluminum matrix composites using a low-pressure infiltration method. To improve the wettability between fiber and matrix, fibers were plated copper using an electroless plating process. The low-pressure infiltration method with preformless succeeded in manufacturing a composite with a volume fraction of about 30% of carbon fibers.The fiber orientation of the composite material manufactured without preform and the fiber orientation of the composite material manufactured using an inorganic binder was almost the same. The manufactured composites with preformless have high hardness and high thermal conductivity.