The undesired residual stresses in fiber reinforced polymer composites are developed during their manufacturing processes due to the thermal and chemical shrinkage of the polymer matrix, which negatively affect the performance of the composites. Applying tensile stress to the reinforcement fibers during the curing of the matrix can reduce or eliminate the undesired residual stresses. Furthermore, the undesired tensile residual stress within the matrix can be replaced with beneficial compressive residual stress which can improve the mechanical properties of the composites. In this study, theoretical stress analysis was performed in order to determine the value of the optimum compressive residual stress that is associated with the highest tensile strength. This value was determined based on the tensile testing result of prestressed composites with a 40% fiber volume fraction. For the composites with different fiber volume fractions, a new approach was introduced to estimate the optimum fiber prestressing level which generates the optimum compressive residual stress within the matrix and consequently, the highest tensile strength can be achieved. In order to validate this approach experimentally, prestressed composites with 25 and 30% fiber volume fraction were prepared by applying the estimated optimum fiber prestressing levels during curing of matrix and tensile testing was performed. The result of the stress analysis showed that the value of the optimum compressive residual stress corresponding to the highest tensile strength is 2.5 MPa approximately. The tensile testing results confirmed the validity of the new approach in estimating the optimum fiber prestressing level for the composites with different fiber volume fractions. For both prestressed composites with 25 and 30% fiber volume fraction, the highest tensile strength was achieved when the theoretically estimated optimum fiber prestressing level was applied to the fibers during the curing of the matrix.

The flexibility of processing PA6-based discontinuous carbon fiber panels using vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding was studied. The ease of incorporating various reinforcements namely baseline, tow in the center of preform, fabric in the center of preform and fabric on the outside as skin was investigated. Mechanical characterization was conducted on all the variations made. There was an average increase of about 3%, 20% and 47% in the tensile properties of tow in the center, fabric in the center and fabric on the outside as skin, respectively, as compared to the baseline. A similar increase in properties was noticed in its flexural and impact strength. The data showed a correlation between the mechanical properties and the total surface area of additional reinforcements used. As the surface area of the reinforcement increased, the mechanical properties increased as well. It also showed that reinforcements on the surface of the preform as a skin performed the best. DMA analysis showed the effect of reinforcement on the storage modulus and tan delta across temperatures ranging from 30°C to 150°C. SEM analysis showed that the fibers and the additional reinforcements were coated with PA6 which translated into consistent mechanical performance.

This article looks at liquid molding of polyamide 6 (PA6) via vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) of discontinuous recycled carbon fiber composites. Its mechanical, thermal, and optical characterization is compared to hydroentanglement/compression molding. Liquid-molded composites show consistent improvement in their tensile and impact properties at three different weight fractions in comparison to hydroentanglement/compression molding. There was roughly a 10 and 13% increase in its tensile strength, modulus, and impact strength properties at 30 and 40% weight fractions and almost a 120% increase at 50% weight fraction. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry data show that the caprolactam was synthesized to PA6 and was comparable to commercial grade PA6 used in this research. Scanning electron microscopy studies show poor wet out in the case of hydroentanglement/compression molding as compared to VARTM. The combination of better mechanical performance and lower processing temperature (165°C) shows promise in being a viable method to process PA6-based recycled fiber composites.