Effect of Physical Fiber Lay of FRP Winding Composite on Mechanical Properties

Nowadays, fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP), a composite material made of a polymer matrix reinforced with fibers, are widely used for many industries especially construction and oil and gas industry. Filament winding is one of the fabrication techniques used to wound FRP and contributes in enhancing the mechanical properties as well as great reduction of weight of the composite. This project discusses on the effect of physical arrangement of Carbon Fiber Wound to HDPE Composite Pipe (CFWHCP) on its mechanical properties. Instead of similar size of fiber tow, different sizes of fiber tow are used in the winding process. 2 types of sample with winding angle of 57°: CFWHCP of 6 fiber tows of same size (12k) and different size (12k and 6k); were fabricated with epoxy as binder in SIRIM Permatang Pauh. The properties of the samples were studied by SEM analysis and tensile test. It was found that the no-fiber triangle area for 12k and 6k Carbon Fiber with Epoxy resin (CFE) is larger than 12k CFE. This is due to the lower fiber content in 12k and 6k CFE. The result from the tensile test shows that CFE with 12k fiber tows have higher tensile strength and elastic modulus as compared to 12k and 6k CFE. Hence it is concluded that the different size of fiber tow with the maintained number of tows and bandwidth size has reduced the original properties of tensile strength and elastic modulus. The area of no-fiber triangle also has increased