Composite Engineering carbon fibre component design and engineering

What is carbon fibre?

The first step of the process is to manufacture an Acrylic fibre which is called Polyacrylonitrile. The following schematic illustrates the necessary steps.

Manufacture of the precursor

Acrylonitril

+

Comonomer

+

Solvent

+

Catalyst

=

Polymerisation

then

Solution spinning

then

Rinsing

then

Post treatment

=

Precursor

Manufacture of the carbon fibres

The PAN precursor, which is called a Polyacrylonitrile fibre is then put through the following process:

Oxidisation in air @ 250 - 300°C

then

Carbonisation in inert gas @ 1000 - 2000+°C

then

Surface and sizing treatment

=

Carbon fibres

Properties of carbon fibres

To view the properties of carbon fibres we have created this chart which will open in a new windowup.


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