Solution for Carbon fiber Wet-Out Issue for Low Cost Sheet Molding Carbon Fiber Composite Production1 Continental Structural Plastics

Poor wetting leads to underperforming composite properties and has been a major obstacle in implementing low cost carbon fibers in SMC parts. The objective of this project is to solve the technical challenge of poor carbon fiber wet-through during Sheet Molding Composite (SMC) process. Continental Structural Plastics (CSP) partnered with ORNL to develop a new sizing technique called Point Sizing (PS) that achieved an increase of a) ~25% of the short beam shear strength with Hydrosize epoxy sizing (Fig 3.), and b) 10-20% of the short beam shear strength with vinyl ester resin (Fig 4.). CSP sought an understanding for the soundness of this technique, if scalable, and if results produced an increase in the shear strength of the composite.