Short carbon fibre-reinforced epoxy foams with isotropic cellular structure and anisotropic mechanical response produced from liquid foam templates
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Song, Wenzhe
Konstantellos, Georgios
Li, Diyang
Lee, Koon-Yang
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In this work, we show that mechanically anisotropic short carbon fibre (sCF)-reinforced epoxy foams with an isotropic cellular structure can be fabricated from liquid foam templates. Short carbon fibres were mechanically frothed in an uncured liquid epoxy resin to produce an air-in-resin liquid foam template, followed by subsequent polymerisation. Fracture toughness test showed that the incorporation of short carbon fibres into the epoxy foams led to a significant increase in their critical stress intensity factors. It was also observed that neat epoxy foams failed catastrophically whilst sCF-reinforced epoxy foams failed in a progressive manner. Compression test further showed that the in-plane compressive moduli of the mechanically frothed sCF-reinforced epoxy foams were significantly higher than their out-of-plane compressive moduli, signifying an anisotropic mechanical response. This anisotropic mechanical response stemmed from the radial flow generated by the high intensity mechanical frothing process, facilitating the preferential orientation of the added short carbon fibres in-plane whilst the entrained air bubbles during the mechanical frothing process were in equilibrium with the surrounding uncured liquid epoxy resin, resulting in an epoxy foam with an isotropic (spherical) cellular structure.
Date Issued
2019-11-10
Date Acceptance
2019-10-11
Citation
Composites Science and Technology, 2019, 184, pp.1-9
ISSN
0266-3538
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Start Page
1
End Page
9
Journal / Book Title
Composites Science and Technology
Volume
184
Copyright Statement
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Identifier
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0266353819313144?via%3Dihub
Subjects
Materials
09 Engineering
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
107871
Date Publish Online
2019-10-14