Mechanical and Microstructural Characteristics of the Fiber-Reinforced Composite Materials

Abstract

Composite fiber materials are superior materials due to their high strength and light weight. Composites reflect the properties of their constituents, which is proportional to the volume fraction of each phase. There are different fiber reinforcement types and each affects its flexural, tensile and compression strength. When selecting a composite for a specific application, the forces excreted on the composite must be known in order to determine the reinforcement type. Unidirectional fiber reinforcement will allow very strong load resistance but only in one direction where as a random orientated fiber reinforcement can resist less load but can maintain this quota in all directions. These materials are said to be anisotropic. Certain composite fibers, taking into consideration their weights, are physically stronger than conventional metals. In this paper, specific light-weight components with different reinforcement types, volume fraction and phase content were newly composed, tested, characterized and evaluated. By applying a novel method, a model which including the various matrix compositions, reinforcement types of each specific component, and its dual-properties was developed according to the structure characteristics. It was shown that certain reinforced composites such as carbon fiber, tend to be much stronger than metals when taking account its weight ratio. The outcome of this research lays a good foundation for the further carbon fiber-based material design work.