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Waste to high performance materials: Self-assembly of short carbon fiber polymer composites
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Waste to high performance materials: Self-assembly of short carbon fiber polymer composites

Joy R. Baxter, Giuseppe R. Palmese and Nicolas J. Alvarez
Applied materials today, v 20, p100786
01 Sep 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmt.2020.100786
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmt.2020.100786View
Accepted (AM)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze),  Open

Abstract

Materials Science Materials Science, Multidisciplinary Science & Technology Technology
Traditional manufacturing of carbon fiber/polymer composite parts is restricted to non-complex geometries and remains expensive due to costly carbon fiber production, laborious processing steps, and generates 20-30% short fiber waste. We present an inexpensive method of aligning and consolidating short (waste) fibers into needle-like building blocks for composite part manufacturing that capitalizes on the anisotropy of short fibers. The method consists of mixing suspended short fibers with a secondary phase that induces self-assembly of the short fibers into an overlapping needle-like bundle with polymer binder distributed in the interstitial sites. The process can achieve high volume fraction of fiber comparable to that of high-performance composites. These self-assembled building blocks can be consolidated to form large scale parts, and they offer several advantages over traditional continuous fiber manufacturing, such as forming complex geometries, utilizing less expensive short fibers, simplifying processability, and increasing fiber recyclability. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
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