Selecting an appropriate production method for the composite material and numerical investigation of the effect of different fiber orientations on the mechanical properties of the composite material

The use of composite materials in the aviation, military, and automotive industries is increasing daily. Composite materials are preferred in repair applications, detailed parts of commercial projects, and aircraft manufacturing because of their high strength and lightweight. Especially in the last 50 years, the amount of composite materials used in aircraft has exceeded 50%. This has led to increased research for manufacturing composite materials and improving their mechanical properties. Hand lay-up with vacuum bagging and vacuum infusion methods, which are among the economical methods in the closed molding technique, are frequently used in manufacturing of composite materials. In this study, carbon fiber reinforced composite material (CCM) was manufactured with two different vacuum infusions and hand lay-up with vacuum bagging methods and tensile and compression tests of CCM were carried out. The manufacturing and tests of CCM tensile samples were carried out according to the ASTM D3039 standard, and the manufacturing and tests of the CCM compression samples were carried out according to the ASTM D6641 standard, and the tensile and compression mechanical properties of CCM were examined. When the test results were examined, it was revealed that the manufacturing method of the sample which has the best tensile and compression mechanical properties was vacuum infusion with single-vacuum bagging. Numerical analysis of the sample which has the best tensile and compression mechanical properties was carried out by using ANSYS 2024 R2 program and the created model was verified with experimental results. In the verified model, the most resistant CCM against tensile and compressive loads was obtained by changing the fiber orientations of CCM.