CARBON FIBER PREPREG SCRAPS REUTILIZATION FROM THE PRODUCTION CYCLE - FEASIBILITY BY USING THERMAL PRESS AND IN-PLANE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES PREDICTION

Abstract

The national aeronautic industry has been employing composite structure materials in order to be competitive over the worldwide industry, besides the research to employ them in automotive industry. Composite materials have high mechanical strength and low specific mass thus delivering high performance of the vehicles of transportation. There is a growing trend towards the increase of the carbon/epoxy composite materials volume as a replacement of metallic alloys. However, this evolution in the structures must be followed by a correct discard policy of these materials. The discards originate from manufacturing process or the end-of-life cycle. In order to reduce the discarded material, during the production cycle, it is necessary to conduct a research to enable the use of scraps, generated during the cutting step of the prepregs. To accomplish this, firstly a competitive manufacturing process is required, in other words, being an energy safe process. In this regard, it will be request a thermal press for an autoclave. Simultaneously, It will be analyzed the shape and dimensions of the scraps, then they will be separated to aim a specific composite, to generate a composite with determined quantity of defects (discontinuities). Next step will be conduct the analysis of tensile strength as a function of the discontinuities, in order to know the limit of the number of discontinuities for the desirable application, as well as the behavior in regard to its fracture process. (AU)