The demand for oil in the world is expected to rise by 1.7% in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to fourth quarter of 2011. In order to cater for this increasing demand, the oil and gas industry continues to explore and develop deep-sea oilfields where oil and gas risers and pipelines encounter extreme conditions. The combination of high pressure and temperature with aggressive media which contains of hydrocarbon, alkanes, acids, sour gas (H2S), and CO2, etc., requires superior material performance and durability. Conventional engineering materials, such as steel are heavy and require corrosion protection, which are currently used as risers, flowlines and choke and kill lines have reached their limits. This is because of the poor chemical resistance and damage tolerance and the high costs involved in supporting their own weight. This has motivated the industry to explore non-corroding and lighter alternative materials if deeper sea reservoirs are to be explored. One such material that has the potential to overcome such limitations thus enabling new design strategies for cost effective, weight and energy saving materials is fibre reinforced composites. The remarkable properties and the tailorability of fibre reinforcement along load paths to achieve excellent performance of the composites is an attribute not found in any other material.
The aim of this research was to manufacture novel carbon fibre reinforced polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) composites by incorporating atmospheric plasma fluorination of the carbon fibres. Powder impregnation method was adapted for the manufacturing of continuous unidirectional (UD) carbon fibre reinforced PVDF composite prepregs. The resulting composite laminates were characterised through various macro-mechanical tests. The impact of atmospheric plasma fluorination of the carbon fibre on the tensile, flexural, short beam shear and tearing properties of the UD composites were investigated to determine whether the improvements observed in the single fibre model composite can be translated to macro-level composite laminates. Apart from this, the impact of combining both fibre and matrix modifications on the composite were studied and the preliminary results on micro-mechanical scale are presented. Finally, composite pipe structures, made by filament winding technique using unidirectional carbon fibre reinforced PVDF composite prepregs onto a pure PVDF liner were fabricated, and characterised with respect to its mechanical properties.