Sh. Lin et al., MECHANICAL-PROPERTIES AND MORPHOLOGY OF DIFFERENT CARBON-FIBER LENGTHS IN REINFORCED POLYETHERETHERKETONE(PEEK) COMPOSITES, Journal of advanced materials, 28(2), 1997, pp. 56-62
Long discontinuous aligned carbon fiber reinforced polyetheretherketon
e (PEEK) composites with fiber lengths of 2, 3, 4, and 5 cm were prepa
red by a novel process. The fiber alignment in the composite increased
with the increasing fiber length. Over 83 percent and 69 percent of f
ibers are oriented within +/- 5 degrees for the composites reinforced
with 5 cm and 2 cm fibers, respectively. On the other hand, only 15 pe
rcent fibers are oriented within +/- 5 degrees in short fiber reinforc
ed composites with the average length of 0.09 mm. The tensile strength
of the composites reinforced with 5 cm fiber was over 60 percent of t
he tensile strength of the continuous fiber reinforced composites, and
the flexural strength and modulus can reach as high as 85 percent of
those values for the continuous fiber reinforced composites. Moreover,
these properties are much higher than those of the short fiber reinfo
rced composites containing 24.4 vol% fiber.