An Attempt to Evaluate the Short Gage Tensile Strength of Carbon Fibers in Tests under an Optical Microscope

Abstract

Carbon fiber is a brittle material and its tensile strength is strongly influenced by defects, which are often assessed by the shape parameter of the Weibull distribution. Therefore, the shorter the gauge length is, the higher the tensile strength is. The usual tensile test is conducted with a gauge length of 25 mm and the tensile strength at short gauge is derived using Weibull distribution. However, it is reported that the shape parameter changes when the gauge length is less than 1mm. The objective of this work is to attempt to evaluate the short gauge tensile strength of carbon fiber in tests under optical microscope observation. The shorter the gauge length was, the more test results of fiber separation from adhesive or fiber breakage in adhesive were observed. It is found that the test of short gauge of 0.2 mm requires careful specimen preparation to avoid shear stress due to misalignment of fiber and loading axes. Weibull shape parameters of the tensile strengths at the gauges from 50mm to 1mm were almost the same as the usual tensile test. However, the values for the 0.5 mm and 0.2 mm gauges were higher than those for the longer gauges.