Abstract
We used ultra-thin chopped carbon fiber tape reinforced thermoplastics (UT-CTT) which is randomly oriented strands (ROS) made of ultra-thin carbon fiber thermoplastic prepreg by using paper making technique. UT-CTT was developed for the weight reduction of mass-production vehicles and shows as high mechanical properties as those of thermosetting CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastics) for airplane structures. Concerning the moduli and their variance of ROS, a theoretical methodology to predict them was proposed by Zhang, but verification of this methodology in the actual material has not been performed yet. Hence, in this study, the applicable range of the methodology is experimentally verified using statistical hypothesis test and the potential of this prediction methodology is investigated. As a result, it can be concluded that Zhang’s model is useful within the actual application although there are some differences between the theoretical assumption and the actual material when the material is too thin because of the distortion of fibers and some gaps attributed to the edge of chopped tapes. Additionally, the specimen size of ROS is generally large because of its large scatter, but it was shown that of UT-CTT is relatively small because of its thinness of chopped tapes.
