Comparing with traditional textile materials, the new carbon fiber composites show good fabric forming performance.
On May 15th, the American Association for Advanced Composite Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA) is a public and private association that aims to accelerate the development of composite materials and processes in the United States. The association was announced by the DuPont company. Fibrtec (Atlanta, Texas, USA) and Purdue University Project Collaboration (Wilmington, DE, USA) completed the first phase of the study. The first phase of the study verifies that the new carbon fiber composites are comparable to traditional textile materials. The preparation showed a good fabric forming property. The first stage result promoted the second stage of the project, and may reduce the cost of the carbon fiber composite structure, making it more suitable for mass adoption in automobiles and other industries.
New materials developed through the IACMI project combine Fibrtec's flexible coated tow, Fibrflex, DuPont's Rapid Fabrication (RFF) technology and proprietary DuPont polyamide resins, all of which were modeled at Purdue University. The coated tow material is a partially impregnated carbon fiber and polyamide composite tow, where the carbon fiber is not completely wetted by the polyamide, resulting in a tow material that is softer than the fully impregnated fiber. RFF The process is a method of fabricating a fabric with tow in different directions without the need to lift the tow during processing. According to reports, experiments, modeling and simulations have shown that this process and material combination method is to produce low cost A potential method for continuous fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) thermoplastics that is well-suited to the molding process.
John A. Hopkins, CEO of IACMI, said: 'Through the second phase of this project, we will more fully describe the form of this new type of carbon fiber thermoplastic prepreg and verify that they are suitable for high speeds. , Cost-sensitive molding processes. This will show whether they are suitable for large-scale applications, especially in the automotive industry. This is an important part of our long-term goal of reducing energy use.