Pultrusion of nanomodified resins

Carbonfibre composites (CFC) are the state of the art high performance materials with outstanding mechanical properties at low density. Undesirable failure mechanisms like delamination can be suppressed successfully by implementation of nano fillers into the polymer matrix of the composite. Especially suited are nano fillers with high aspect ratios, like Carbon-Nanot-Tubes (CNT) or Carbon-Nano-Fibres (CNF). Besides suppression of delamination also the mechanical properties of the composites are considerably enhanced, e.g. an increase of 40 % of the tensile strength of the composites is achievable. One highly important application field for CFC are the pultrusion products, where rods, profiles and tubes are produced from endless carbon fibres. Pultrusion is performed with low viscosity resin featuring long pot time and fast curing characteristics. The improvement of pultrusion products by nano modified resins is not at all established up to date, but would yield high potential for the pultrusion market due to the expected enhancement of materials properties. The actual improvement of mechanical properties is strongly dependent on the surface properties of the nano particles and their optimal dispersion in the resin, which often includes toxic chemicals and demanding procedures. The effort for functionalization and dispersion thus hinders the successful industrial application of the nanomodified CFCs until now. Goal of this project is to modify resin systems used for pultrusion with nano particles in such a way that the mechanical properties of the final CFC out of the pultrusion process is improved considerably. To this purpose applicable functionalization and dispersion methods will be established for this resin systems, CFC samples from pultrusion in lab-scale will be produced from this resin and characterized and mechanical tested. Process parameters for optimal implementation of the nanomodified resin into the pulstrusion production route will be collected in order to enable future scale up.