Environmental effect on the mechanical properties of commingled-yarn-based carbon fibre/polyamide 6 composites

The main objective of this experimental investigation was to evaluate the changes from accelerated ageing on selected properties of carbon fibre/polyamide 6 composites based on hybrid yarns. In this study, two types of mechanical tests were performed to measure the environmental influence on the material properties. They are three-point bending to measure the flexural strength and stiffness, and short beam three-point bending to measure the interlaminar shear strength. The 10-mm-thick quasi-isotropic carbon fibre/polyamide 6 composites with 52% volume fraction of carbon fibre to be tested were manufactured by autoclave consolidation. The test samples were dried, and subsequently exposed to 60℃ and 100% relative humidity at different lengths of time up to 2500 h, followed by drying at 23℃ and 50% relative humidity. Few samples were additionally completely dried at 70℃ in vacuum for 21 months. Tests were also performed on as manufactured and dried material at low temperature (–45℃) and high temperature (115℃). The measured mechanical properties decreased with exposure time at 60℃ and 100% relative humidity. Both the bending stiffness and the strength degrade to a level of about 65%, whereas interlaminar shear strength drops to about 87% of the property values of the unexposed (initially dried) material. The bending stiffness and strength at −45℃ are about 87% of the properties at room temperature, whereas at 115℃ the stiffness drops to 75% and the strength drops to 60% of the properties at room temperature. The interlaminar shear strength values also drop to about 75% at both −45℃ and 115℃. Extreme temperatures and long-time exposure to humidity of quasi-isotropic carbon fibre/polyamide 6 laminates can thus reduce the bending stiffness and strength by up to 35% and the interlaminar shear strength by up to 25%.