Carbon fabric reinforced polyetherimide composites: Influence of weave of fabric and processing parameters on performance properties and erosive wear

Woven carbon fabric reinforced (55 vol.%) polyetherimide (PEI) composites were fabricated using three types of weaves viz. plain (P), twill (T), and satin-4 H (S) by impregnation technique. Three more similar composites were fabricated with film technique to study the influence of both, weave of fabric and processing technique on the performance properties of the total seven composites including neat PEI. The composites were evaluated for physical and mechanical properties along with erosion wear behavior studied in identical conditions. In almost all properties viz. tensile strength (TS), modulus (TM), elongation to break (e), flexural strength and modulus, interlaminar shear strength (ILSS), etc., film technique proved far inferior to impregnation technique because of improper wetting of fiber strands, as evidenced by SEM studies. CF reinforcement enhanced all the properties of PEI manifold except elongation to break. None of the weaves proved best performer in all the mechanical properties. In case of erosive wear studies, plain weave composite proved slightly better than satin weave composite. Composite with twill weave proved poorest performer. In case of film technique, however, trends were different where plain weave composite proved poorest and satin proved best. Efforts were made to correlate various strength properties with wear resistance WR. The factor (elongation × toughness) showed fairly good correlation with WR. SEM studies were conducted to understand wear mechanisms.