Abstract
Fracture faces of several commercially available carbon fibres have been examined in the scanning electron microscope (SEM) after tensile and flexural failure. There are marked differences between the faces obtained after flexural failure and those produced after tensile failure, in the case of all the PAN-based fibres studied. In contrast, there is very little difference between the fracture faces for the two modes of failure in a mesophasepitch-based fibre. The circular cross-section PAN-based fibres of all types are more flexible and less brittle than both a high modulus bilobal cross-section PAN-based fibre and the mesophase-pitch-based fibre. These fracture studies indicate that the Reynolds-Sharp failure mechanism operates in both tensile and flexural modes so that fibres containing sheet-like structures will be more brittle and inflexible than those containing more highly inter-linked random structures.
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Da Silva, J.L.G., Johnson, D.J. Flexural studies of carbon fibres. J Mater Sci 19, 3201–3210 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00549805
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00549805