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Faculty of Engineering
Mechanical Engineering Department
Materials Science (ENME 331)



Material - Carbon Fiber



Elias Zananiri 1101446

Prepared for: Dr. Ibrahim Hammad

Submitted on: 9/3/2013



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Index

Introduction ... 3
History 4
Manufacturing process 5
Structure 7
Properties 9
Applications ... 12
Conclusion 14
Bibliography ... 14










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The following pages contain general information about the manufacture, structure,
properties and applications of a material called carbon fiber.
Introduction

A material which consist of mostly carbon atoms in its structure and fibers about 5-10 m in
diameter is called Carbon Fiber and sometimes known as graphite fiber. The atoms of
carbon in this material are arranged in a way that they are bonded together in a crystal
structure parallel to the axis of the fiber. Due to the arrangement of crystals the fiber has
high strength to volume ratio; making the material relatively strong for its size.
Carbon fiber is black in color; its distinctive woven appearance which makes it attractive
makes it as well distinguishable between other materials.
It is produced by two different methods known as PAN or pitch.
Carbon fiber relative to other materials is a "new" one, in the past decades and for the
present era it is becoming a very popular material, and it will continue so for the close
future. This can be said about this material due to its properties; where it can be used for
uncountable applications.
High tensile strength, high stiffness, high resistance to extension under load, high chemical
resistance, low weight, high temperature tolerance, high thermal conductivity, light in its
weight and low thermal expansion are all properties of carbon fiber, it is extremely rigid and
strong although somewhat brittle.
Compared to other similar fibers, such as plastic fibers or glass fibers, carbon fiber is an
expensive material.
And since this material is lighter and stronger than most metals, a new application is found
for carbon fiber every day. It is said that it is one of mankind's greatest engineered materials,
where it has replaced many materials in aerospace industry, bridges, musical instruments,
race cars, and many more applications that are going to be discussed in the next coming
pages.

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History

Looking back at the history of carbon fiber, this material was created in 1958, but the
process used at that time didn't create the carbon fiber we knew nowadays, and the process
involved was inefficient since the structure of the material only contained about 20% carbon
with low stiffness and low strength properties. Early in 1960s the process was improved to
contain about 50% carbon in its structure. The real value of the material carbon fiber was
realized in 1963 when carbon fiber was made in an industrial production facility in a short
period.
Rolls-Royce was the one of the first three British companies to start using carbon fiber in the
production of one of their car's engine, and later on they used this material to make the
compressor blades in the engine, but their final attempt failed.
Introduction of carbon fibers made out from petroleum pitch process derived from
processing oil was found in 1970s, when experimental work for finding alternative raw
materials was satisfied. The fibers produced a material containing about 85% carbon with
excellent properties.
That what can be said about carbon fiber in general, now let us have a closer look at its
manufacturing process, structure, properties and applications.








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Manufacturing process

The manufacturing of carbon fibers depends on stretching and heating treatments of
artificial fibers, a simplified procedure for manufacturing this material can be seen in figure 1
for the two common manufacturing process PAN and pitch.

Figure 1: Schematic for PAN and pitch manufacturing processes.

The two most common raw products involved in the production of carbon fibers are
Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and pitch. PAN is a man-made fiber that is pre-manufactured and
wound onto spools, where pitch is a coal-tar petroleum product that is stretched into fibers
after melting and spinning.
The above figure can be discussed step by step as: for the first step, in the thermoset
process, the fibers are heated to about 400 C and elongated. In this step carbon chains are
cross-linked to ensure that the fibers will not melt in the following steps. Second, the fibers
are heated ,in an environment where there is no oxygen, to about 800 C in the carbonize
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process where non-carbon impurities are removed during this step. Third, the modulus of
elasticity (E) for the material is ensured to be between 300 to 600 GPa, this is the result for
graphitizing the fibers, where the fibers are heated from 1200 C to 3100 C and undergo a
stretching process up to 100% elongation, the process of stretching ensures the crystalline
orientation shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: The structure of carbon fiber during graphitization

For surface treatment and epoxy sizing, these last two steps are performed to improve the
carbon fiber/epoxy bonding strength. These last steps can be changed according to what the
material is going to be used for.
The precursor is the name used to describe the raw material used to make carbon fiber.
Polacrylonitrile (PAN) makes about 90% of the carbon fiber produced, while the left 10% is
made out of other processes including pitch. Each manufacturer of carbon fiber has his own
way of mixing the exact amounts of each precursor and they consider that their "recipe" is a
trade secret.
To achieve specific effect for carbon fiber, different gases and liquids are made to react with
the fiber, and to prevent certain reactions with the fiber as well, other different materials
are made not to react with the fiber.
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Major manufacturers in the world producing carbon fibers are Zoltek, Toray Industries, Toho
Tenax, SGL Carbon and Hexcel. Carbon fiber is made by these producers and others
according to the applications that this material is going to be used. Carbon fiber becomes
more expensive as it will have higher modulus of elasticity.

Structure
If carbon fiber is going to be described it can be described from its name; fiber that is made
out of carbon. The word graphite is a type of pure carbon atoms, where these atoms have a
sheet like structure of hexagonal aromatic rings (figure 3).

Figure 3: part from a sheet of graphite, showing the hexagonal aromatic rings

And one form of graphite is the carbon fiber polymer; where the sheets of carbon are long
and thin. When these sheets are packed together they from what is called fiber, and that's
where the name of carbon fiber comes from.
A polymer where chains are put out next to each other and extended straight, all lying along
the same axis is called a polymeric fiber (figure 4).

Figure 4: simple arrangement showing what is meant by polymeric fiber
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And that is the kind of fiber used in the material of carbon fiber to give the structure that is
shown below (figure 5).

Figure 5: carbon fiber structure

The fibers are only a base in the material, they are like to arrange the very thin string carbon
atoms in sheets to get the order needed in the structure's material, when bound in the
manufacturing process with plastic polymer under heat and pressure the product is a
lightweight and strong material.
Carbon fiber is similar in the atomic structure of the graphite, where they both contain
sheets of carbon, but they still don't have the same properties. The difference comes from
the way in which the sheets are joined together. Graphite is a soft and brittle material due to
the weak forces that are holding the sheets together which are Van der Waals forces, while
the bonding between the layers of the fiber is strong with covalent bonding.
Two words are essential for describing the carbon fiber structure, turbostratic is word that
describes the crystal structure where the planes have lost their arrangement, and graphitic is
the portion of carbon present as graphite in the material. And carbon fiber can be graphitic,
turbostratic or having a structure containing both; where this depends on the precursor (raw
material) that is used in the process for manufacturing carbon fiber. Using the PAN process,
carbon fiber will be turbostratic, while when using the pitch process and after heating at
very high temperatures, the material will be graphitic.
.

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Properties
A lot of properties can be named to describe carbon fiber, in this section each property is
going to be described shortly with its advantages and disadvantages.
Good rigidity: Resistance to bending and stretching is what called rigidity. Carbon
fiber is very rigid, and carbon fiber that is toughened by plastic is almost 3 times
stiffer than aluminum. Modulus of elasticity (E) is a measure how rigid or stiff a
material is under stress, it is the slope of stress strain diagram.

High strength to weight ratio: Resistance to breaking is what called strength. Typical
materials having good strength to weight ratio are aluminum, magnesium, carbon,
titanium, glass fiber and carbon fiber has a high strength to weight ratio. The
pressure at failure divided by the density of the material shows how strong a material
is.

Electrical conductivity: Carbon fiber is an electrical conductive material, what is bad
about this property is that accumulation of carbon fiber dust in the factory or in the
shop can cause short circuit for any electrical equipment present or it might cause
sparks.

Corrosion resistant: Carbon fiber itself is non reactive with other chemicals, but for
example epoxy in the manufacturing process is sensitive to the light of the sun, and
other material combined with the carbon fiber can make it a reactive material.

Non-flammable: when there is fire and corrosion, carbon fiber can be used since it is
non-flammable and chemically non reactive. So it is a fire resistant material and
that's why it is used as protective clothing for firefighting and as a blanket to be used
as welding protection.

Good tensile strength: Tensile strength describes the ability of a material to resist
maximum stress when pulled before failing. But since carbon fiber is considered as a
brittle material so it usually fails at different stress levels. Brittle material does not
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elongate much before failure happens, and the problem with these materials is that
the failure is not known when it is going to happen, but when it happens it is
considered as a catastrophic failure with very dangerous sudden fracture.

Fatigue resistant: Fatigue can be described as failure under cyclic or fluctuating
loading, where failure occurs at loads lower than the tensile or yield strength. Carbon
fiber has a good resistance to fatigue, but as said before, when failure happens it
happens catastrophically and it is not known when it is going to happen.

Low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE): This coefficient measures how a material
elongates or contracts due to temperature change. Since carbon fiber is made with
different compositions of precursor material and using different processes, so it has a
range for this coefficient. Talking about the processes described in this report for
example if PAN process is used it will have higher strength and higher CTE than using
pitch process, but if lower CTE is needed with higher modulus of elasticity so pitch
process is used instead. When small movement can cause a disturbance in a
structure or a machine carbon fiber can be used with low CTE, for example in optical
machines.

Brittle: Carbon fiber is a brittle material, so when the fibers bend they fail at very low
strain, and that's why ductile material is better than brittle materials, since for ductile
materials necking is an indicator that fracture is going to happen, while in brittle
materials fracture happens suddenly after reaching yield stress or the material might
fail before reaching the yield stress. From this explanation one can say that fracture
in brittle materials is very dangerous and can be harmful.

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Figure 6: showing the difference between brittle and ductile fracture

Thermal conductivity: This is a measure of how easy heat can flow through a
material. And as stated before, since carbon fiber is made using different
manufacturing processes the thermal conductivity can vary from one process to
another, this variation is needed depending on the situation that the material is going
to be used for. Pitch made carbon fibers have high thermal conductivity.

Relatively expensive: Carbon fiber is considered a relatively expensive material for
the materials it replaces, as steel, aluminum and many other materials, but its
rigidity, strength and lightweight worth its money, and is needed in many aspects as
in spacecrafts, airplanes, race cars, since reducing weight is essential in these aspects,
so the carbon fiber is worth the extra cost. The advantage of using carbon fiber is the
low maintenance requirement.









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Applications

40 years ago or so, carbon fiber was unfamiliar and it was an exotic material, but now it is
getting involved in our daily lives step by step due to its importance, people say that if
carbon fiber has any disadvantage, it would be its productions cost, although there are some
disadvantages about its properties, stated above. But on the long run and for the close
future the production cost will be decreased and that's because of the increasing demand on
this product; it is becoming used in aspects where the creator of carbon fiber himself didn't
expect his product to get involved in. And now different applications will be stated that uses
carbon fiber; of course not all the applications are going to be stated since there are
unknown number of applications that uses this material.
Due to the high strength weight ratio that exceeds any other metal, carbon fiber has reached
the moon using spacecraft, and it is being used even in the internal design of the spacecraft
due to its lightweight. Helicopters, jets, airplanes, all manufacturers of the products started
using carbon fiber due to its importance, and since it increases the range of flight with
weight reduction, as well as it is simplifying maintenance as well.
In many sports around the world carbon fiber is being used to protect the athletes and help
them improve their performance, for example ice hockey sticks, tennis racquets, golf clubs,
crash helmets( for rock climbers, horse riders, motorcyclists) are all being made out of
carbon fiber. This material have saved many lives of motorcyclists on tracks due to its
damage tolerance in the body of a motorcycle.
It is right that carbon fiber substitute cheap materials, but on the long run it is worth it. Let's
take for example the uses of carbon fiber in military applications, starting from protective
helmets, missiles, to planes, when soldiers move from one place to another, they move their
equipment as weapons, vehicles and everything else with them, moving weight from one
place to another requires energy, so if weight is reduced by the use of carbon fiber, the
energy needed will be less, thus saving energy.
In automobile industry carbon fiber was barely used when it was too expensive for an
ordinary person to afford the cost of it. At first it was used for formula one cars, then in
specific race cars, but as the cost started coming down, it is being widely used in automotive
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engineering and design of the cars. Parts of supercar bodies were being made out of carbon
fiber, but nowadays there are some cars that their bodies are all made out of carbon fiber.
This material is not involved in the production of cars' body only, it is involved in the
interiors and seat frames as well.


Now let us state some other familiar products and different industries that are made out of
and use carbon fiber:
Bicycle frames
Fishing rods
Protective cases for laptops and smart phones.
Shoe soles
Satellites
Ships
Gas and oil industry
Aerospace industry
Furniture
Musical instruments
Structural elements of buildings
Wind turbine blades
And of course many more applications using carbon fiber can be found.
For the main two applications of carbon fiber, nuclear and aerospace engineering, and any
engineering process that includes in its design components such as gears, fan blades,
automobile bodies, cams and bearings. But carbon fiber is becoming more familiar because
recently it has been involved with civil engineering processes as a rehabilitation of a bridge.
As well as conductivity of carbon fiber will help the material to be used in technologies using
electronics in the future.

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Conclusion

That what can be said about carbon fiber in general - about its manufacture, structure,
properties and applications. Despite of the carbon fiber structure and the process done to
manufacture it, it is becoming a much more used material in the present time and it will
continue so for the future because of its importance in engineering applications and
components. Because carbon fiber cost is dropping, so it is becoming involved in more
industries, and the demand is becoming higher on it, this is due to the wide range of
properties that are present in this material. One improvement that can be done to carbon
fibers is to reach fully developed aromatic carbon rings in its structure.

Bibliography

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"Fibers". Polymer science learning center. Retrieved: 2 April 2013. <
http://www.pslc.ws/mactest/fiber.htm >
"Carbon Fiber". Polymer science learning center. Retrieved: 2 April 2013. <
http://www.pslc.ws/mactest/level2.htm >
" Polyacrylonitrile". Polymer science learning center. Retrieved: 3 April 2013. <
http://www.pslc.ws/mactest/pan.htm >
Jane M. Sanders "REHABILITATING BRIDGES: CARBON FIBER-REINFORCED POLYMER SHOWS
PROMISE FOR REPAIRING STRUCTURES". Georgia Tech Research News. 20, October 1998.
Georgia Tech. 6 April 2013.
< http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/BRIDGE.html >
"The processing, properties, and structure of carbon fibers". Home Springer. February
2005. Springer. 6 April, 2013.
< http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11837-005-0217-8 >