High Performance Carbon Fibers

Fiber(s), 77 163-188. See also Acrylic fibers Carbon fibers Filled fibers High performance fibers New fibers Olefin fibers Optical fiber(s) Polyamide fibers Regenerated cellulose fibers Vegetable fibers antimicrobial acrylic, 77 215-219... 

Epon HPT . [Shell] Epoxy matrix resin used for advanced composites with glass, carbon, aramid or b n fibers, high-performance structural laminates and adhesives, preptegs. 

Figure 2. Specific tensile properties of advanced reinforcing fibers. Redrawn from T. Starr, Carbon and high performance fibers, directory and databook, edition 6, page viii, Chapman Hall, London (1995).

High-performance carbon fiber including high-strength carbon fiber, high-modulus carbon fiber, mid-modulus carbon fiber, etc. 

From 1964 to 1975, spurred by the growing awareness of the potential properties of carbon fibers, high-modulus and high-strength carbon fibers from rayon, PAN, and pitch were invented, developed, and commercialized, opening up an explosive growth in the "high performance" composites Industry. 

Information about carbon fiber products and manufacturers, world-wide, may be found in "Carbon and High Performance Fibres, Directory-3," compiled by D. R. Lovell, (Pammac Directories,... 

Lovell, D. R. Carbon and High Performance Fibers Directory,... 

The principal classes of high performance fibers are derived from rigid-rod polymers, gel spun fibers, modified carbon fibers, synthetic vitreous fibers, and poly(phenyiene sulfide) fibers. 

Composites. Various composite materials have evolved over the years as a significant class of high performance textile products. The prototype composite is carbon fiber with an epoxy resin matrix for stmctural akcraft components and other aerospace and military appHcations. Carbon fiber composites ate also used in various leisure and spotting items such as golf clubs, tennis rackets, and lightweight bicycle frames. However, other types of appHcations and composites ate also entering the marketplace. For example, short ceUulose fiber/mbbet composites ate used for hoses, belting, and pneumatic tire components. 

High performance composites may be laminates wherein veils of carbon fiber ate treated with an epoxy resin, stacked up to the desired final product thickness, and then laminated together under heat and pressure (see Composite materials Carbon and graphite fibers). Simply mixing together carbon or glass fibers and polymeric resins to form a reinforced plastic leads to a composite material, but this is not a laminate if not constmcted from discrete phes. 

Some high performance laminates consisting of carbon fiber webs and epoxy resins are cured in autoclaves. An autoclave is a pressure chamber in which the pressure is appHed hydrostatically. 

Producers of PAN-based carbon fiber include Toray, Toho Beslon, Mitsubishi Rayon, and Asahi Kasai Carbon in Japan Hercules, Amoco Performance Products, BASE Stmctural Materials, Eortafil (Akzo), and Mitsubishi Rayon in the United States and Akzo, Sigri, and Soficar in Europe. Primary suppHers of high performance pitch-based carbon fibers include Amoco Performance Products, Mitsubishi Kasai, and Tonen Corp. 

Mechanical Properties and Stability at Elevated Temperature. One increasingly important characteristic of carbon fibers is their excellent performance at elevated temperatures. Strength tested in an inert environment remains constant or slightly increases to temperatures exceeding 2500°C. Amoco s high modulus pitch carbon fiber P-50 maintains approximately 80% of room temperature modulus at temperatures up to 1500°C, then decreases more rapidly to 30% at 2800°C (64). The rapid decrease in modulus is a result of increased atomic mobiHty, increa sing fiber plasticity. 

Edie, D. D. and McHugh, J. J., High performance carbon fibers. In Carbon Materials for Advanced Technologies, ed. T. D. Burchell, Elsevier Science, Oxford, 1999, pp. 119 138. 

Because of their unique blend of properties, composites reinforced with high performance carbon fibers find use in many structural applications. However, it is possible to produce carbon fibers with very different properties, depending on the precursor used and processing conditions employed. Commercially, continuous high performance carbon fibers currently are formed from two precursor fibers, polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and mesophase pitch. The PAN-based carbon fiber dominates the ultra-high strength, high temperature fiber market (and represents about 90% of the total carbon fiber production), while the mesophase pitch fibers can achieve stiffnesses and thermal conductivities unsurpassed by any other continuous fiber. This chapter compares the processes, structures, and properties of these two classes of fibers. 

In addition to their exceptional tensile strengths, PAN-based carbon fibers are far more resistant to compressive failure than are their pitch-based counterparts or polymeric high-performance fibers. However, because the PAN precursor is not... 

A relatively new class of high-performance carbon fibers is melt-spun from mesophase pitch, a discotic nematic liquid crystalline material. This variety of carbon fibers is unique in that it can develop extended graphitic crystallinity during carbonization, in contrast to current carbon fibers produced from PAN. 

High Performance Carbon Fibers from Novei Precursors... 

Current Areas for High Performance Carbon Fiber Research... 

Applied Sciences, Inc. has, in the past few years, used the fixed catalyst fiber to fabricate and analyze VGCF-reinforced composites which could be candidate materials for thermal management substrates in high density, high power electronic devices and space power system radiator fins and high performance applications such as plasma facing components in experimental nuclear fusion reactors. These composites include carbon/carbon (CC) composites, polymer matrix composites, and metal matrix composites (MMC). Measurements have been made of thermal conductivity, coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), tensile strength, and tensile modulus. Representative results are described below. 

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