Process Monitoring of Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites Using Carbon Nanotube Buckypaper Sensors

Abstract

Buckypapers are free-standing porous mats of entangled CNT ropes cohesively bounded by van der waals interactions. For its high conductance and good compatibility with polymer composites, the resistance changes of BP and phase changes of polymer matrix have good correlation properties, So the BP sensors can be embedded into composite laminates for composite curing process monitoring. Experiment results show that the flow and gelation information of polymer matrix can be detected by BP sensors although the ply orientations of composite laminates are different. For the different ply orientations usually lead to different residual stress levels and deformation degree of composite structure, BP sensors show different resistance-temperature response during the cooling stage of composite cure cycle.