Improvement of the Compressive Strength of Carbon Fiber/Epoxy Composites via Microwave Curing

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• 作者：Xuehong Xu¹ ; Xiaoqun Wang¹ ; ^{wangxiaoqun@buaa.edu.cn" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Qun Cai² ; Xu Wang² ; Ran Wei¹ ; Shanyi Du¹
• 关键词：Carbon fiber ; Epoxy ; Microwave curing ; Compressive properties
• 刊名：Journal of Materials Science & Technology
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：March 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：32
• 期：3
• 页码：226-232
• 全文大小：1932 K

文摘

Microwave processing was used to cure the carbon fiber/epoxy composites and designed for improving the compressive strength of the materials. By controlling the power of microwave heating, vacuum bagged laminates were fabricated under one atmosphere pressure without arcing. The physical and mechanical properties of composites produced through vacuum bagging using microwave and thermal curing were compared and the multistep (2-step or 3-step) microwave curing process for improved compressive properties was established. The results indicated that microwave cured samples had somewhat differentiated molecular structure and showed slightly higher glass transition temperature. The 2-step process was found to be more conducive to the enhancement of the compressive strength than the 3-step process. A 39% cure cycle time reduction and a 22% compressive strength increment were achieved for the composites manufactured with microwave radiation. The improvement in specific compressive strength was attributed to better interfacial bonding between resin matrix and the fibers, which was also demonstrated via scanning electron microscopy analysis.