Experimentation and Modeling of Laser Radiation Scattering Through Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers

Abstract

With the prevalence of carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRPs) in aerospace platforms, there is a need to better understand radiative heat transport through the material. A laboratory experiment was constructed and computational Monte Carlo (MC) model optimized to quantify and understand the laser-scattering properties of CFRPs. The transmission data were analyzed by a zonal MC (ZMC) method to determine the material’s albedo and extinction coefficient, which can then be used for platform-level aerospace models to predict heat transfer more accurately through CFRP structures. This paper considers the effects of nodal, substrate, and detector plane sizing, as well as laser beam parameters, on matching albedo and extinction coefficient predictions from the ZMC method to experimental test data. Average albedo values for IM7/977-3 CFRP using the anchored ZMC method are 0.78 and 0.81 with one-ply and two-ply samples, respectively, having standard deviations of 0.11 and 0.09. Extinction coefficient predictions are 109.4 and [Formula: see text] with standard deviations of 28.3 and [Formula: see text] for one-ply and two-ply samples.