Approaches to lower carbon fiber manufacturing costs for hydrogen storage tanks
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Zhou, Xinzhang↗
Engineering topics
Paulauskas, Felix L.
Publications and source records attributed to Paulauskas, Felix L..
Carbon Fiber Plasma Surface Treatment (CRADA Final Report)
This project focused on developing and applying a new surface treatment technology to carbon fiber applications. During the course of this work, two different treatment prototypes were developed and explored. Highly reactive surface chemistries were successfully applied to carbon fiber, resulting in surface oxygen content as high as 27%. Enhanced composite properties of a 45% increase in the interfacial strength and a 10% increase in tensile and flexural strength were demonstrated for thermoplastic resins. This enhancement was performed while proving that the plasma surface treatment process does not damage the fiber. Treatment times were as low as 1 min.
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
Carbon fiber reinforcements for sheet molding composites
A method of processing a carbon fiber tow includes the steps of providing a carbon fiber tow made of a plurality of carbon filaments, depositing a sizing composition at spaced-apart sizing sites along a length of the tow, leaving unsized interstitial regions of the tow, and cross-cutting the tow into a plurality of segments. Each segment includes at least a portion of one of the sizing sites and at least a portion of at least one of the unsized regions of the tow, the unsized region including and end portion of the segment.
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
Atmospheric pressure plasma processing of polymeric materials utilizing close proximity indirect exposure
A plasma treatment method that includes providing treatment chamber including an intermediate heating volume and an interior treatment volume. The interior treatment volume contains an electrode assembly for generating a plasma and the intermediate heating volume heats the interior treatment volume. A work piece is traversed through the treatment chamber. A process gas is introduced to the interior treatment volume of the treatment chamber. A plasma is formed with the electrode assembly from the process gas, wherein a reactive species of the plasma is accelerated towards the fiber tow by flow vortices produced in the interior treatment volume by the electrode assembly.
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
Carbon fiber reinforcements for sheet molding composites
A method of processing a carbon fiber tow includes the steps of providing a carbon fiber tow made of a plurality of carbon filaments, depositing a sizing composition at spaced-apart sizing sites along a length of the tow, leaving unsized interstitial regions of the tow, and cross-cutting the tow into a plurality of segments. Each segment includes at least a portion of one of the sizing sites and at least a portion of at least one of the unsized regions of the tow, the unsized region including and end portion of the segment.
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
Intermittent sizing on carbon fiber for composite application
Intermittent sizing is a technique designed to improve the bonding of carbon fiber to a resin when manufacturing composite parts. The purpose of this technique is to improve Sheet Molding Composites (SMC) made of non-continuous carbon fibers while using regular material. At the end of the project, tests showed that improved mechanical properties have been achieved using this technique compared to conventional process. Mechanical properties have been improved by 110% for the peak tensile stress and by 60% for the modulus at the laboratory scale. In this project, Continental Structural Plastics and ORNL have worked to demonstrate the scalability and viability of commercialization of this technique.
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
Atmospheric pressure plasma processing of polymeric materials utilizing close proximity indirect exposure
A plasma treatment method that includes providing treatment chamber including an intermediate heating volume and an interior treatment volume. The interior treatment volume contains an electrode assembly for generating a plasma and the intermediate heating volume heats the interior treatment volume. A work piece is traversed through the treatment chamber. A process gas is introduced to the interior treatment volume of the treatment chamber. A plasma is formed with the electrode assembly from the process gas, wherein a reactive species of the plasma is accelerated towards the fiber tow by flow vortices produced in the interior treatment volume by the electrode assembly.
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
System to continuously produce carbon fiber via microwave assisted plasma processing
A method for continuously processing carbon fiber including establishing a microwave plasma in a selected atmosphere contained in an elongated chamber having a microwave power gradient along its length defined by a lower microwave power at one end and a higher microwave power at the opposite end of the elongated chamber. The elongated chamber having an opening in each of the ends of the chamber that are adapted to allow the passage of the fiber tow while limiting incidental gas flow into or out of said chamber. A continuous fiber tow is introduced into the end of the chamber having the lower microwave power. The fiber tow is withdrawn from the opposite end of the chamber having the higher microwave power. The fiber to is subjected to progressively higher microwave energy as the fiber is being traversed through the elongated chamber.
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
High performance carbon fibers from very high molecular weight polyacrylonitrile precursors
In this study, carbon fibers are unique reinforcing agents for lightweight composite materials due to their outstanding mechanical properties and low density. Current technologies are capable of producing carbon fibers with 90-95% of the modulus of perfect graphite (~1025 GPa). However, these same carbon fibers possess less than 10% of the theoretical carbon fiber strength, estimated to be about 100 GPa.[1] Indeed, attempts to increase carbon fiber rigidity results in lower breaking strength. To develop advanced carbon fibers with both very high strength and modulus demands a new manufacturing methodology. Here, we report a method of manufacturing high strength, very high modulus carbon fibers from a very high molecular weight (VHMW) polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor without the use of nanomaterial additives such as nucleating or structure-templating agents, as have been used by others.[2,3]
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
Strong and electrically conductive graphene-based composite fibers and laminates
In this study, graphene is an ideal candidate for lightweight, high-strength composite materials given its superior mechanical properties (specific strength of 130 GPa and stiffness of 1 TPa). To date, easily scalable graphene-like materials in a form of separated flakes (exfoliated graphene, graphene oxide, and reduced graphene oxide) have been investigated as candidates for large-scale applications such as material reinforcement. These graphene-like materials do not fully exhibit all the capabilities of graphene in composite materials. In this study, we show that macro (2 inch × 2 inch) graphene laminates and fibers can be produced using large continuous sheets of single-layer graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition. The resulting composite structures have potential to outperform the current state-of-the-art composite materials in both mechanical properties and electrical conductivities (>8 S/cm with only 0.13% volumetric graphene loading and 5 × 10 3 S/cm for pure graphene fibers) with estimated graphene contributions of >10 GPa in strength and 1 TPa in stiffness.
77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗