The effect of fibre direction of on the strength of the carbon fibre pipes manufactured via roll wrapping method

Searching of high strength and lightweight materials are hot topic for enhancing the performance of the industrial applications. This is why the composite materials are getting more attention. Composite materials are obtaining from two or more materials and they contain the superior properties of these materials. Especially fibre reinforcement plastics (FRP) which are known as high strength composite materials are used in a considerable amount of high-tech applications. Some of these applications can be listed as marine, aviation, motorsports, energy and defence industry applications. However, there are still some challenges needs to be handled such as long production times, high production costs and difficulties for complex geometries. Although there are several production methods are existing for these geometries like filament winding, pultrusion and lay up in a mold, the roll wrapping method is the most efficient method for enhancing highest strength for the materials. For this reason, a resistance heater assisted oven is manufactured and cylindrical pipe aluminium materials used as mold to manufacture carbon fibre composite pipes in the present study. Unidirectional carbon/epoxy prepreg materials were roll wrapped to these aluminium mold. Shrink tapes are used to enhance the surface smoothness and required pressure for prevent delaminating of the product during the process. Heating rates, the maximum temperature value and the dwelling time values were chosen according to the manufacturer's recommendations. Prepregs are roll wrapped to the mold at the determined angles (0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90°) according to the different potential usages areas in the industry. The strength of the products is measured with standard mechanical tests. According to the test results the graphical data are created and discussed. The results indicated that the fibre orientation is crucial for the strength of the carbon fibre composite pipe material.