Diao, HHDiaoRobinson, PPRobinsonWisnom, MRMRWisnomBismarck, AABismarck2016-06-012017-04-252016-04-25Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 2016, 87, pp.186-1931359-835Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/33270Unidirectional (UD) carbon fibre reinforced polymers offer high specific strength and stiffness but they fail in a catastrophic manner with little warning. Gas-texturing and non-constrained annealing were used to introduce fibre waviness into UD polyamide 12 composites produced by wet-impregnation hoping to produce composites with a more gradual failure mode and increased failure strain. Both methods increased the variation of fibre alignment angle compared to the control samples. The composites containing wavy fibres exhibited a stepwise, gradual failure mode under strain controlled uniaxial tension rather than a catastrophic failure, observed in control samples. Gas-texturing damaged the fibres resulting in a decrease of the tensile strength and strain to failure, which resulted in composites with lower tensile strength and ultimate failure strain than the control composites. Non-constrained annealing of carbon fibre/PA-12 produced wavy fibre composites with ultimate failure strain of 2%, significantly higher than 1.6% of the control composite.© 2016 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Materials0912 Materials Engineering0913 Mechanical Engineering0901 Aerospace EngineeringJournal Articlehttps://www.dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesa.2016.04.025AERO/RB1527