Development and characterization of new continuous carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites based on melt spun high performance matrix fibers
High-performance thermoplastic polymers are very attractive because of their outstanding mechanical properties even under high operating temperature up to 300 °C. Even though their application areas are limited compared to the usage of other thermoplastic polymer types which are related mainly due to their highly materials and production costs and the extreme difficulties of the manufacturing. Carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastics composites are attractive because of their mechanical properties. Since conventional isotropic composites like the injection–molded products cannot frequently fill the demanded specification of all applications optimally, carbon continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites are especially fabricated for these applications.
Hence they have received more attention in recent years. Although the carbon continuous fiber reinforced composite have clear unique advantages compared to molding products, they have been used in general in limited amount as a lightweight structures because of their unexplained production challenges mainly a proper impregnation of the thermoplastic matrix into the reinforcing fibers and uniform fiber dispersion during the processing. Among various manufacturing methods, the usage of semi-finished products (performs) is in a high demand. To improve the mechanical properties and increase the productivity, the hybrid yarn was developed recently. The main purpose of this work is the manufacturing of high-performance multifilament with end requested structure and mechanical properties. That means the ability to achieve high-performance multifilament yarn with reduced fiber diameter. This new multifilament enhances definitely the efficiency, mechanical and structure properties of subsequent commingled hybrid yarn as well as the subsequent formed lightweight composites.