This work focuses on the impact damage evaluation of a carbon fiber-reinforced thermoset composite at a component level (beams) as an effort to develop the service strategies for this class of materials. The beams were impact damaged at a variety of energy levels, and the pulse thermography nondestructive evaluation approach was used to characterize the damaged areas. The damaged beams were subjected to compression tests to evaluate their residual properties. As expected, both the beam maximum load and residual stiffness decreased with the increase in damage size. The damage growth rates under different load levels were investigated in fully reversed torsional fatigue tests. The fatigued beams were also characterized for their residual compression properties, which were then compared with those of the unfatigued beams. The results will be used to develop computer-aided engineering models to predict the residual strength and fatigue life of damaged composite components.
High Pressure Resin Transfer Molding (HP-RTM) is a new variant of composite Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) process that enables a short cycle time and a high composite strength to weight ratio, thus presents a great potential for fabricating automotive structural parts. Due to the high injection pressure, fiber-tow washout is becoming one of the major defects which impact the properties of composite materials. To predict and mitigate the fiber-tow washout problem, approaches of both experimental process optimization and computational prediction are essential. In this paper, an experimental study of fiber-tow washout is undertaken to determine the flow injection limits beyond which the preform deformation can be observed at various fiber volume fractions. A feasibility map is developed for a specific fabric and resin combination. It provides a means to determine the injection rates and fiber volume fractions to fabricate a quality part with minimal in-plane fiber washout due to the hydrodynamically flow-induced force during the HP-RTM process.
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