The availability of a considerable amount of waste carbon fiber (CF) and the increased pressure to recycle/reuse materials at the end of their life cycle have put the utilization of recycled CF (rCF) under the spotlight. This article reports the successful manufacturing of hybrid yarns consisting of staple CF cut from virgin CF filament yarn and polyamide 6 fibers of defined lengths (40 and 60 mm). Carding and drawing are performed to prepare slivers with improved fiber orientation and mixing for the manufacturing of hybrid yarns. The slivers are then spun into hybrid yarns on a flyer machine. The investigations reveal the influence of fiber length and mixing ratio on the quality of the card web, slivers and on the strength of the hybrid yarns. The findings based on the results of this research work will help realize value-added products from rCF on an industrial scale in the near future.

This article reports the successful manufacturing of hybrid yarns from virgin staple CF (40 or 60 mm) or recycled staple CF (rCF) by mixing with polyamide 6 (PA 6) fibers of defined length. The hybrid yarns are produced using an optimized process route of carding, drawing, and flyer machine. Furthermore, the influence of CF length, CF type (i.e. virgin or rCF), CF volume content, and twist of the yarn are also investigated regarding the tensile properties of unidirectionally laid (UD) thermoplastic composites. The results show that CF length, yarn twist, and CF content of composites play a big role on the tensile properties of thermoplastic composites. From the comparison of tensile strength of UD composites produced from 40 and 60 mm virgin staple CF, it can be seen that the increase of yarn twist decreases the tensile strength. However, the effect of twist on the tensile properties of UD composites manufactured from 40 mm virgin staple CF is insignificant. The tensile strength of UD thermoplastic composites manufactured from the hybrid yarn with 40 and 60 mm virgin staple CF and rCF is found to be 771 ± 100, 838 ± 81, and 801 ± 53.4 MPa, respectively, in the case of 87 T/m containing 50 volume% CF.

The aim of this paper is to highlight recent developments in the processing of waste carbon fibre for thermoplastic composites. Initially, injection moulding and nonwoven technologies have been used to integrate waste carbon fibres into fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composites. Recently, tape and hybrid yarn spinning technologies have been developed to produce tape and hybrid yarn structures from waste carbon fibre, which are then used to manufacture recycled carbon fibre-reinforced thermoplastics with much higher efficiency. The hybrid yarn spinning technologies enable the development of various fibrous structures with higher fibre orientation, compactness and fibre volume fraction. Therefore, thermoplastic composites manufactured from hybrid yarns possess a good potential for use in load-bearing structural applications. In this paper, a comprehensive review on novel and existing technologies employed for the processing of waste carbon fibre in addition to different quality aspects of waste carbon fibre is presented.

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Twist plays an important role to impart tensile strength in yarn during the spinning process. In the most widely used ring-spinning machine for short staple yarn production, a combination of ring and traveler is used for inserting twist and winding the yarn on cops. The main limitation of this twisting mechanism is the friction between the ring and traveler, which generates heat at higher speed and limits the productivity. This limitation can be overcome by the implementation of a magnetic bearing system based on superconducting technology, which replaces completely the existing ring/traveler system of the ring-spinning machine. This superconducting magnet bearing consists of a circular superconductor and permanent magnet ring. After cooling the superconductor below its transition temperature, the permanent magnet ring levitates and is free to rotate above the superconductor ring according to the principles of superconducting levitation and pinning. Thus the superconducting magnetic bearing (SMB) ensures a friction-free operation during spinning and allows one to increase spindle speed and productivity drastically. The yarn properties using the SMB system have also been investigated and they remain nearly identical to those of conventional ring yarns.

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The most common measuring method to characterise the dynamic yarn path in the ring spinning process is to measure the yarn tension, where the yarn path is almost straight. However, it is much more complex to measure the yarn tension at the other positions, for example, between the yarn guide and traveller (balloon zone) and between the traveller and winding point of the cop (winding zone), as the yarn rotates continuously around the spindle axis. In this paper, two new methods of yarn tension measurement in the balloon zone are proposed. In the first method, the balloon shape was first recorded with a high speed camera. The balloon tension was then calculated by comparing the yarn strain (occurring in the balloon zone) measured by a digital image analysis program with the stress-strain curve of the yarn produced. In the second method, the radial forces of the rotating balloon were measured by using modified measurement techniques for measurement of yarn tension. Moreover a customised sensor was developed to measure the winding tension between the traveller and cop. The values measured were validated with a theoretical model and a good correlation between the measured and theoretical values could be revealed.