Experimental and hydrodynamic methods to determine aqueous dispersion of discontinuous reclaimed carbon fibres

Abstract

In this study, the dispersion of reclaimed carbon fibres following cost-effective surface treatment is explored with a hydrodynamic fibre moving model, and a practical fibre dispersion effect is investigated through various physical dispersion methods. To utilise reclaimed carbon fibres for a desired composite product, our proposed low-cost surface treatment is shown to be beneficial to the physical and chemical properties of the reclaimed carbon fibres and to yield polar-hydrophilic characteristics. Single fibre tensile testing is performed to explore the effect of surface treatment on the reclaimed carbon fibres (a higher tensile strength was observed). A computational hydrodynamic fibre moving model based on a moving particle semi-implicit method is newly designed to perform hydrodynamic simulation to determine aqueous dispersion of discontinuous reclaimed carbon fibres. This simulation helps understanding fibre flocculation phenomena from the perspective of fibre stiffness, which should not be disregarded for the fibre dispersion. Fibre surface analyses including morphology and functional groups are carried out to investigate the effect of surface treatment. The hydrodynamic simulation and proposed fibre dispersion methods with a cost-effective surface treatment approach can be widely applicable to any type of reclaimed carbon fibres to produce recycled fibre reinforced polymer composite materials.