https://youtu.be/_QhAoAQUph0?

si=1XuxYEefmmSWFQ4L
Module 2

FIBRES
Contents
• Fibers : Introduction, types of fibers,
natural fibers, glass fiber fabrication,
structure, properties and applications,
boron fiber fabrication, structure,
properties and applications, carbon
fiber, Ex-Pan carbon fiber, Ex
cellulose carbon fiber, Ex-Pitch
carbon, carbon fiber structure,
properties and applications, aramid
fiber fabrication, structure, properties
and applications, whiskers:
characteristics, properties and
applications.
• Reinforcements can be in the form of particles, flakes, whiskers, short
fibers, continuous fibers, or sheets.
• It turns out that most reinforcements used in composites have a
fibrous form because materials are stronger and stiffer in the fibrous
form than in any other form and the matter in a fibrous form can be
very flexible
Natural Fibres
• Natural fibers in simple
definition are fibers that are
not synthetic or manmade.
They can be sourced from
plants or animals.
• The use of natural fiber from
both resources, renewable
and nonrenewable such as oil
palm, sisal, flax, and jute to
produce composite materials,
gained considerable attention
in the last decades, so far
Digital images of different bast fibers: (a-a1) flax fibers, (b-b1) hemp fibers, (c-c1) jute
fibers, (d-d1) ramie fibers, and (e-e1) kenaf fibers.
Natural fibre
plants
Properties
• They have low density, high specific properties, are biodegradable,
are derived from renewable resources, have a small carbon footprint
and provide good thermal and acoustical insulation.
Applications
• NFPCs are finding in electrical and electronic industries, aerospace,
sports, recreation equipment, boats, machinery office products, and
so forth.
• The car manufacture in Europe has done various researches to
increase the applications of NFPCs in automotive industry, especially
in car interior such as seat backs, parcel shelves, boot linens, front
and rear door linens, truck linens, and door-trim panels.
Why fibres?
1. Due to the size effect; the smaller the size, the lower the probability
of having imperfections in the material.
2. A high aspect ratio (length/diameter, l/d), which allows a very large
fraction of the applied load to be transferred via the matrix to the stiff
and strong fiber.
3. A very high degree of flexibility, which is really a characteristic of a
material that has a low modulus or stiffness and a small diameter. This
flexibility permits the use of a variety of techniques for making
composites with these fibers.
Glass Fibre

• Glass fiber is a generic name like

carbon fiber or steel or aluminum.
Just as different compositions of
steel or aluminum alloys are
available, there are many different
chemical compositions of glass fibers
that are commercially available.
• Common glass fibers are silica based (*50–60% SiO2) and contain a host of other
oxides — of calcium, boron, sodium, aluminum, and iron
• The designation E stands for electrical because E glass is a good
electrical insulator in addition to having good strength and a
reasonable Young’s modulus;
• C stands for corrosion and C glass has a better resistance to chemical
corrosion than other glasses; and
• S stands for the high silica content that makes S glass withstand
higher temperatures than other glasses.
Fabrication

• The raw materials are melted in a hopper and the molten

glass is fed into the electrically heated platinum bushings
or crucibles; each bushing contains about 200 holes at its
base.
• The molten glass flows by gravity through these holes,
forming fine continuous filaments; these are gathered
together into a strand and a size is applied before it is
wound on a drum.
• The final fiber diameter is a function of the bushing orifice
diameter; viscosity, which is a function of composition and
temperature; and the head of glass in the hopper
• Molten glass exits the furnace at ≈1340°C/2444°F and is extruded
through heated bushing plates (top image), which have 200 to 8,000 very
small orifices, or nozzles. The winders (lower part of right image) apply
tension to the extruded glass, drawing it out into thin filaments. These are
cooled by water spray (the mist can be seen near the top of the right
image), coated with size (via the roller) and gathered together to form a
strand.
• Continuous strand is a group of individual
fibers; roving is a group of parallel strands; and
chopped fibers consist of strand or roving
chopped to lengths between 5 and 50 mm.
Glass fibers are also available in the form of
woven fabrics or nonwoven mats.
Limitations
• The conventional methods of making glass or ceramic fibers
involve drawing from high-temperature melts of appropriate
compositions.
• This route has many practical difficulties such as the need to
process at high temperatures, the immiscibility of components
in the liquid state, and the easy crystallization during cooling.
Sol gel method for glass fibre fabrication
• The sol-gel process is a manufacturing technique in which a solution
of small particles is converted to produce bulk solid materials.
• A sol is a colloidal suspension in which the individual particles are so
small (generally in the nm range) that they show no sedimentation. A
gel, on the other hand, is a suspension in which the liquid medium
has become viscous enough to behave more or less like a solid.
• The sol–gel process of making a fiber involves a conversion of fibrous
gels, drawn from a solution at a low temperature, into glass or
ceramic fibers at several hundred degrees Celsius.
• Fiber spinning is the process of extruding a liquid through small holes
in a spinneret to form solid filaments
• The spinneret is a metal component having one to several hundred
small holes. The fluid polymer is injected through these tiny openings
to produce filaments from polymer solution.
Structure
• silica-based glasses are analogous to organic glassy polymers in that they
are amorphous, i.e., devoid of any long-range order that is characteristic of
a crystalline material.
• Pure, crystalline silica melts at 1800 °C. However, by adding some metal
oxides, we can break the Si–O bonds and obtain a series of amorphous
glasses.
• The isotropic, three-dimensional network structure of glass; this leads to
the more or less isotropic properties of glass fibers.
• Young’s modulus and thermal expansion coefficient are the same along the
fiber axis and perpendicular to it. This is unlike many other fibers, such as
aramid and carbon, which are highly anisotropic.
Applications
• The density is quite low and the strength is quite high; Young’s modulus,
however, is not very high. Thus, while the strength-to-weight ratio of glass
fibers is quite high, the modulus-to-weight ratio is only moderate. It is this
latter characteristic that led the aerospace industry to other so-called
advanced fibers (e.g., boron, carbon, Al2O3, and SiC).
• Moisture decreases glass fiber strength. Glass fibers are also susceptible to what
is called static fatigue, that is, when subjected to a constant load for an extended
time period, glass fibers can undergo subcritical crack growth. This leads to failure
over time at loads that might be safe when considering instantaneous loading.
• Glass fiber reinforced resins are used widely in the building and
construction industry. Commonly, these are called glass fiber
reinforced plastics, or GFRP. They are used in the form of a cladding
for other structural materials or as an integral part of a structural or
non-load-bearing wall panel; window frames, tanks, bathroom units,
pipes, and ducts are common examples.
• The rail and road transportation industry and the aerospace industry
are other big users of GFRP.
BORON FIBRES
Boron Fibre
• Boron fibers are manufactured by chemical vapor deposition of
boron onto about 12 μm diameter tungsten or carbon wire
(core). As a result, boron fibers have a relatively large diameter,
100–200 μm. They are extremely brittle and sensitive to surface
damage.
• Being mainly used in metal matrix composites, boron fibers
degrade on the contact with aluminum or titanium matrices at
the temperature that is necessary for processing (above
500°C). To prevent this degradation, chemical vapor deposition
is used to cover the fiber surface with about 5 μm-thick layer of
silicon carbide, SiC, (such fibers are called Borsic) or boron
carbide, B4C.
Properties
• They are characterized by low density, high tensile strength and
high modulus of elasticity. In particular, boron fibres are
extremely stiff (eg, five times stiffer than glass fibres) and
difficult to weave, braid or twist, but they can be formed into
resin-impregnated tapes for hand lay-up and filament winding
processes.
Fabrication
• In commercial production of boron fibres, the method of Chemical Vapour
Deposition (CVD) is used.
• The CVD is a process in which one material is deposited onto a substrate to
produce near theoretical density and small grain size for the deposited
material.
• In CVD the material is deposited on a thin filament. The material grows on
this substrate and produces a thicker filament.
• The size of the final filament is such that it could not be produced by drawing
or other conventional methods of producing fibres.
• It is the fine and dense structure of the deposited material which determines
the strength and modulus of the fibre.
• Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is the technique in which
substances that are in vapor phase are condensed to
generate solid phase material.
• In the process of BCl3 reduction, a very fine tungsten wire (10–12 μm
diameter) is pulled into a reaction chamber at one end through a mercury
seal and out at the other end through another mercury seal.
• The mercury seals act as electrical contacts for resistance heating of the
substrate wire when gases (BCl3+H2) pass through the reaction chamber,
where they react on the incandescent wire substrate.
• The reactor can be vertical or horizontal.
• CVD of Boron fibre
Features of boron fibre
• These are ceramic monofilament fiber.
• Fiber itself is a composite.
• Circular cross section.
• Fiber diameter ranges between 33-400 μm and typical diameter is
140 μm.
• Boron is brittle hence large diameter results in lower flexibility.
• Thermal coefficient mismatch between boron and tungsten results in
thermal residual stresses during fabrication cool down to room
temperature.
Structure of boron fibre
• Based on X-ray and electron diffraction studies, it is concluded that
amorphous boron is really nanocrystalline 𝛽-rhombohedral.
• In practice, the presence of microcrystalline phases (crystals or groups
of crystals observable in the electron microscope) constitutes an
imperfection in the fiber that should be avoided.
• Larger and more serious imperfections generally result from
surpassing the critical temperature of deposition or the presence of
impurities in the gases.
structure
• Generally, the fiber core consists only
of WB4 and W2B5. On prolonged
heating, the core may be completely
converted into WB4.
• As boron diffuses into the tungsten
substrate to form borides, the core
expands from its original 12.5 μm
(original tungsten wire diameter) to
17.5 μm.
• The SiC coating is a barrier coating
used to prevent any adverse reaction
between B and the matrix, such as Al, at
high temperatures
Residual stresses
• Boron fibers have inherent residual stresses that have their origin in the process of chemical vapor
deposition.
• Growth stresses in the nodules of boron, stresses induced by the diffusion of boron into the
tungsten core, and stresses generated by the difference in the coefficient of expansion of deposited
boron and tungsten boride core, all contribute to the residual stresses and thus can have a
considerable influence on the mechanical properties of the fiber.
Applications
• Boron fiber composites are in use in a number of U.S. military aircraft,
notably the F-14 and F-15, and in the U.S. space shuttle.
• They are also used for stiffening golf shafts, tennis rackets, bicycle frames,
and in making repair patches for polymer matrix composites (PMCs).
• A big advantage of boron fiber over other high-performance fibers is their
relatively better properties in compression.
• A commercial product called Hy-Bor composite uses a mix of carbon and
boron fibers in an epoxy matrix, which has improved properties in
compression because of the boron fibers.
• One big obstacle to the widespread use of boron fiber is its high cost
compared to that of other fibers.
Carbon Fibre
• Carbon is a very light element with a density equal to 2.268 g cm−3
• Carbon can exist in a variety of crystalline forms
• Graphitic structure of carbon wherein the carbon atoms are arranged
in the form of hexagonal layers
• Other well-known forms of carbon is the covalent diamond structure
wherein the carbon atoms are arranged in a three-dimensional
configuration with little structural flexibility
• Another form of carbon is Buckminsterfullerene (or buckyball), with a
molecular composition of C60 or C70
CARBON FIBER
• Carbon in the graphitic form is highly anisotropic, with
a theoretical Young’s modulus in the layer plane being
equal to about 1000 GPa, while that along the c axis is
equal to about 35 GPa.
• High strength bond between carbon atoms in the layer
plane results in an extremely high modulus while the
weak van der Waals-type bond between the
neighboring layers results in a lower modulus in the c-
direction
• All processing techniques of carbon fiber have the goal
of obtaining a very high degree of preferred orientation
of hexagonal planes along the fiber axis.
 CARBON FIBER
• Carbon fiber is a generic term representing a family of
fibers
• Carbon fibers of extremely high modulus can be made by
carbonization of organic precursor fibers followed by
graphitization at high temperatures
• The organic precursor fiber, that is, the raw material for
carbon fiber, is generally a special textile polymeric fiber
that can be carbonized without melting
• The precursor fiber, like any polymeric fiber, consists of
long-chain molecules (0.1–1 μm when fully stretched)
arranged in a random manner
• Such polymeric fibers generally have poor mechanical
properties and typically show rather large deformations
at low stresses mainly because the polymeric chains are
not ordered
• Most of the carbon fiber fabrication processes involve the following
essential steps:
1. A fiberization procedure to make a precursor fiber. This generally involves
wet, dry, or melt spinning followed by some drawing or stretching
2. A stabilization treatment that prevents the fiber from melting in the
subsequent high-temperature treatments
3. A thermal treatment called carbonization that removes most noncarbon
elements
4. An optional thermal treatment called graphitization that improves the
properties of carbon fiber obtained after carbonization
Ex – PAN carbon
fibres
• Ex-PAN Carbon Fibers
• Carbon fibers made from PAN (polyacrylonitrile) are called ex-PAN carbon
fibers
• The polyacrylonitrile fibers are stabilized in air (a few hours at 250 °C) to
prevent melting during the subsequent higher temperature treatment
• The fibers are kept under tension, i.e., they are prevented from contracting
during this oxidation treatment
• The white PAN fibers become black after oxidation.
• There are still considerable quantities of nitrogen and hydrogen present, which
are eliminated as gaseous waste products during carbonization, that is, heating
to 1000–1500 °C
• The final optional heat treatment consists of holding the fibers for very short
duration at temperatures up to 3000 °C.
• The mechanical properties of the resultant carbon fiber may vary over a large range
depending mainly on the temperature of the final heat treatment
 Ex-Cellulose Carbon
Fibers
• Cellulose is a natural polymer that is frequently found in a fibrous
form
• Cotton has the desirable property of decomposing before melting
• It is not very suitable, however, for high modulus carbon fiber
manufacture because it has a rather low degree of orientation
along the fiber axis, although it is highly crystalline
• It is also not available as a tow of continuous filaments and is
quite expensive. These difficulties have been overcome in the
case of rayon fiber, which is made from wood pulp, a cheap
source
• The cellulose is extracted from wood pulp, and continuous
filament tows are produced by wet spinning.
 Ex-Cellulose Carbon
Fibers
• Rayon is a thermosetting polymer
• The process used for the conversion of rayon into carbon fiber involves the
same stages:
• Fiberization
• Stabilization in a reactive atmosphere (air or oxygen, <400 °C)
• carbonization (<1500 °C)
• graphitization (<2500 °C).
• Various reactions occur during the first stage, causing extensive
decomposition and evolution of H2O, CO, CO2, and tar
• The stabilization is carried out in a reactive atmosphere to inhibit tar
formation and improve yield
• Chain fragmentation or depolymerization occurs in this stage. Because of this
depolymerization, stabilizing under tension, as in the case of PAN precursor,
does not work
• The carbonization treatment involves heating to about 1000 °C in nitrogen
• Graphitization is carried out at 2800 °C under stress. This orienting stress at
high temperature results in plastic deformation via operation of slp on
multiple systems and diffusion.
Ex-Pitch Carbon Fibers
• Commercial pitches are mixtures of various organic compounds with an average
molecular weight between 400 and 600
• There are various sources of pitch, but the three commonly used sources are
polyvinyl chloride (PVC), petroleum asphalt, and coal tar
• Pitch-based carbon fibers are attractive because of the cheap raw material, high
yield of carbon fiber, and a highly oriented carbon fiber that can be obtained from
mesophase pitch precursor fiber
• The same sequence of oxidation, carbonization, and graphitization is required for
making carbon fibers from a pitch precursor
• Orientation in this case is obtained by spinning. An isotropic but aromatic pitch is
subjected to melt spinning at very high strain rates and quenched to give a highly
oriented, pitch precursor fiber
• This thermoplastic fiber is then oxidized to form a crosslinked structure that
makes the fiber non-melting. This is followed by carbonization and graphitization.
Ex-Pitch Carbon Fibers
Aramid Fiber
• Aramid fiber, launched in the
1960s, is much stiffer and
lighter than glass fiber.
• Kevlar is DuPont’s trade name
for aramid fiber while Twaron
is the trade name of aramid
fiber made by Teijin Aramid
• https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=ybgMEjl9j-g
Aramid Fibre
• Aramid fiber is a generic term for a class of synthetic organic
fibers called aromatic polyamide fibers.
• The basic chemical structure of aramid fibers consists of oriented
para-substituted aromatic units, which makes them rigid rodlike
polymers.
• The rigid rodlike structure results in a high glass transition
temperature and poor solubility, which makes fabrication of these
polymers, by conventional drawing techniques, difficult.
• Instead, they are spun from liquid crystalline polymer solutions by
dry-jet wet spinning.
Structure of Aramid Fibre

Amide Aromatic
compound
• Aramid is short for aromatic polyamide
• It is a manufactured fiber in which fiber – forming substance is a long
– chain synthetic polyamide in which at least 85% of the amide
linkages are attached directly between two aromatic rings.
• The aromatic rings impart the rigid rodlike chain structure of aramid.
These chains are highly oriented and extended along the fiber axis,
with the resultant high modulus.
• Aramid fiber has a highly crystalline structure and the para
orientation of the aromatic rings in the polymer chains results in a
high packing efficiency.
• Strong covalent bonding in the fiber direction and weak hydrogen
bonding in the transverse direction result in highly anisotropic
properties, i.e., high tensile properties along the fiber axis but poor
compressive properties along the fiber axis. Properties are also poor
in the radial direction.
Fabrication
• For aramid fibers, the dry-jet wet spinning method is used. Solution
polycondensation of diamines and diacid halides at low temperatures
(near 0 °C) gives the aramid forming polyamides.
• Low temperatures are used to inhibit any by-product generation and
promote linear polyamide formation. The resulting polymer is
pulverized, washed, and dried; mixed with concentrated H2SO4; and
extruded through a spinneret at about 100 °C.
• The jets from the orifices pass through about 1 cm of air layer before
entering a cold water (0–4 °C) bath. The fiber solidifies in the air gap,
and the acid is removed in the coagulation bath
Properties
• High resistance to abrasion
• High resistance to organic solvents
• Non – conductive
• Good vibration damping characteristics.
• Withstand very high temperature (high melting point)
• Poor in compression
• Not brittle unlike carbon fiber and glass fiber.
• Aramid fibers are sensitive to ultraviolet (UV) light. When exposed to
ultraviolet light, aramid fibers discolor from yellow to brown and lose
mechanical properties.
Properties
• Aramid fiber, like most other high-performance organic fibers, has
rather poor characteristics in compression, its compressive strength
being only about 1/8 of its tensile strength. This follows from the
anisotropic nature of the fiber.
• In tensile loading, the load is carried by the strong covalent bonds
while in compressive loading, weak hydrogen bonding and van der
Waals bonds come into play, which lead to rather easy local yielding,
buckling, and kinking of the fiber.
• Thus, aramid type high- performance fibers are not suitable for
applications involving compressive forces.
Applications
• Ballistic protective applications such as bullet proof vests
• Protective apparel such as gloves, motorcycle protective clothing and hunting gaitors,
chaps and pants.
• Sails for sailboats, yachts etc
• Belts and hosing for industrial and automotive applications
• Aircraft body parts
• Boat hulls
• Fibre optic and electromechanical cables
• Friction linings such as clutch plates and brake pads
• Gaskets for high temperature and pressure applications
• Adhesives and sealants
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5u3MupNo6g&t=73s
Applications
Kevlar - This is meant mainly for use as rubber reinforcement for tires
(belts or radial tires for cars and carcasses of radial tires for trucks) and,
in general, for mechanical rubber goods.
Kevlar 29 - This is used for ropes, cables, coated fabrics for inflatables,
architectural fabrics, and ballistic protection fabrics. Vests made of
Kevlar 29 have been used by law enforcement agencies in many
countries.
Kevlar 49 - This is meant for reinforcement of epoxy, polyester, and
other resins for use in the aerospace, marine, automotive, and sports
industries.
Whiskers
• Whiskers are monocrystalline, short fibers with extremely high strength.
This high strength, approaching the theoretical strength, comes about
because of the absence of crystalline imperfections such as dislocations.
• Typically, whiskers have a diameter of a few micro meter and a length of a
few mm. Thus, their aspect ratio (length/diameter) can vary from 50 to
10,000.
• Whiskers do not have uniform dimensions or properties. This is perhaps
their greatest disadvantage, i.e., the spread in properties is extremely
large.
• Handling and alignment of whiskers in a matrix to produce a composite are
other problems.
Preparation
• Whiskers are normally obtained by vapor phase growth. Back in the 1970s,
a new process was developed that used rice hulls as the starting material
to produce SiC particles and whiskers.
• The SiC particles produced by this process are of a finer size. Rice hulls are
a waste by-product of rice milling.
• For each 100 kg of rice milled, about 20 kg of rice hull is produced.
• Raw rice hulls are heated in the absence of oxygen at about 700 °C to drive
out the volatile compounds. This process is called coking.
• Coked rice hulls, containing about equal amounts of SiO2 and free C, are
heated in inert or reducing atmosphere (flowing N2 or NH3 gas) at a
temperature between 1500 and 1600 °C for about 1 h to form silicon
carbide
• When the reaction is over, the residue is heated to 800 °C to remove
any free C. Generally, both particles and whiskers are produced,
together with some excess free carbon. A wet process is used to
separate the particles and the whiskers.
VLS Process
• Exceptionally strong and stiff silicon carbide whiskers have been
grown using the so-called VLS process. The average tensile strength
and modulus were 8.4 GPa and 581 GPa, respectively. The acronym
VLS stands for vapor feed gases, liquid catalyst, and solid crystalline
whiskers.
• For SiC whiskers, transition metals and iron alloys meet this
requirement. Steel particles (30 𝜇 m) are used as the catalyst.
• At 1400 °C, the solid steel catalyst particle melts and forms a liquid
catalyst ball. From the vapor feed of SiC, H2, and CH4, the liquid
catalyst extracts C and Si atoms and forms a supersaturated solution.
• The supersaturated solution of C and Si in the liquid catalyst
precipitates out solid SiC whisker on the substrate.
• As the precipitation continues, the whisker grows. Generally, the
process results in a range of whisker morphologies.
Failure mechanisms/modes of Composite
materials
Fibre fracture/breaking
• The fibre breaks into two or more pieces along its length when the
axial tensile stress (or strain) in the fibre exceeds the axial strength (or
maximum allowable strain) of the fibre. This kind of fracture occurs in
brittle fibres. Such fractures are more catastrophic in nature than
other modes of fibre failure.
• The fibre fracture may also take place in shearing when the shear
stress or strain exceeds the maximum allowable stress or strain.
Fibre Buckling/Kinking
• This type of failure occurs when the axial load on the fibre is
compressive in nature. The axial compressive stress causes the fibre
to buckle. This form of fibre failure is also called as fibre kinking. The
critical stress at which the kinking takes place is function of material
properties of fibre and matrix properties and the distribution of fibres
in the matrix
Fibre Bending
• The bending of fibre can take place under flexural load. The
bending of fibres also depends upon the properties of fibre and
matrix along with the fibre arrangement.
Fibre splitting
• The fibre fails in this mode when the transverse or hoop stresses in
the fibre exceeds the maximum allowable value. Further, this can also
happen when these stresses in the interface/interphase region
(region in matrix very close to the fibre) exceed the maximum
allowable stress.
Fibre radial cracking
• The hoop stresses can also cause the radial cracking of the
fibre. This type of cracking is seen in some of the fibres.
Fibre pull out
and debonding
• Fiber pull-out is one of the failure
mechanisms in fiber-reinforced
composite materials.
• Other forms of failure include
delamination, intralaminar
matrix cracking, longitudinal
matrix splitting, fiber/matrix
debonding, and fiber fracture.
• The cause of fiber pull-out and
delamination is weak bonding.
Fibre pull out
• The fibre pullout takes place when the bonding between fibre
and matrix is weakend and the fibres are subjected to tensile
stresses. If the fibres are already broken, then the fibres just
slide through the matrix and come out of it. This phenomenon is
called fibre pullout.
Debonding
• Debonding occurs if the physical, chemical or mechanical forces that hold the
bond together are broken
Delamination
• It is seen that the adjacent layers are bonded together by a thin
layer of resin between them. This interface layer transfers the
displacement and force from one layer to another layer. When
this interface layer weakens or damages completely, it causes
the adjacent layers to separate. This mode of failure is called
delamination.