Investigating the translaminar fracture toughness of 3D printed semi-woven and non-woven continuous carbon fibre composites

The translaminar fracture toughness of two different continuous fibre 3D printed ply architectures was evaluated using compact tension (CT) test specimens. A baseline 0/90 cross-ply architecture was characterised and compared to the performance of a semi-woven 0/90 ply architecture that is similar in concept to Advanced Placed Ply (AP-Ply) fabricated using automated fibre placement. The experimental results show that the trans-laminar fracture toughness of 3D printed carbon fibre composites is slightly influenced by the laminate archi-tecture. Both ply architectures exhibited a rising R curve which was less pronounced in the semi-woven samples. This study demonstrates that tailoring the meso structure of a fibre reinforced composite has a minor influence on the translaminar properties and lays the groundwork for ply scale optimisation to fully exploit the manufacturing flexibility of 3D printed continuous fibre composites.

Automated summary

The translaminar fracture toughness of two different continuous fibre 3D printed ply architectures was evaluated using a compact tension test. The performances of a baseline 0/90 cross-ply architecture and a semi-woven 0/90 ply architecture resembling Advanced Placed Ply (AP-Ply) fabricated using automated fibre placement were compared. The experimental results showed that the laminate architecture has a slight influence on the trans-laminar fracture toughness of 3D printed carbon fibre composites, and both ply architectures exhibited a rising R curve, with the semi-woven samples showing a less pronounced curve.