Kinetic Study of Resin-Curing on Carbon Fiber/Epoxy Resin Composites by Microwave Irradiation

Abstract

Microwave processing has great potential for improving composite manufacturing such as reduc-tion of curing time, energy requirements and operational costs. In this paper, the effects of mi-crowave irradiation for resin-curing of carbon fiber/epoxy resin composite that was composed of discontinuous carbon fibers of 130 µm or 3 mm were investigated. The mechanical properties of carbon fiber/epoxy resin composite cured by microwave irradiation for 20 min at 120˚C were similar to ones of the sample prepared by conventional oven for 180 min at 120˚C. Microwave-cured carbon fiber/epoxy resin composite had higher glass transition temperature than the one prepared by conventional oven. The relation between curing time and flexural modulus indicated that the curing velocity of microwave-irradiated carbon fiber/epoxy resin composite was 9 times faster than the one prepared by conventional oven. Furthermore, activation energies for resin-curing reaction on microwave-and conventional-cured carbon fiber/epoxy resin composite were estimated. The resin-curing reaction in carbon fiber/epoxy resin composite was promoted by mi-crowave irradiation.