What is carbon fiber tow?
Carbon fiber material is not naturally occurring, is a fiber material after high temperature heat treatment performance polymer monomers, carbon content of more than 95%, with a very stable physical structure, but the texture is very soft, if not prepared through the appropriate processing, can not be used alone, so scientists have come up with ways to prepare the carbon fiber into a monofilament, and then prepared into a tow for the production of processing more carbon fiber products.
There are two general methods of preparing carbon fiber tow: the vapor phase method and the organic fiber carbonization method. Vapor phase method is inert gas under the auspices of small molecules of organic matter deposited at high temperatures for the fibers, the method of preparation of short fibers; and organic fiber carbonization method is to stabilize organic fibers to generate flame-resistant fibers, inert high-temperature environment will be carbonized into long fibers.
Carbon fiber itself has a different classification, including T and M these two kinds, T represents the tensile strength, M represents the tensile modulus, T series and M series is the mechanical properties of carbon fiber in two different directions, and mutually exclusive, and scientists after research, and the preparation of MJ series of carbon fiber tow, as far as possible, the strength and modulus of the unity, in order to find a more balanced performance of the carbon fiber tow.
Carbon fiber tow is also divided into different types, which is divided according to the number of carbon fiber monofilaments, there are 1K, 3K, 6K, 12K, 24K, 48K, etc., where K means 1000, such as 3K carbon fiber tow contains 3000 carbon fiber monofilaments. The larger the number, the more carbon fiber monofilaments in the carbon fiber tow. This classification can be simply categorized into large and small tow carbon fibers, with large tows being more suitable for civil carbon fiber applications and small tows being more suitable for aerospace applications.
What are Carbon Fiber Composites?
Carbon fiber composites focus on the word “composite”, indicating that it is not a single carbon fiber material, carbon fiber as a reinforcing body fusion of other matrix materials and the formation of high-strength composite materials performance.
At present, carbon fiber composites have more classification, mainly in the physical form of carbon fiber and matrix material type of the two major directions. The physical form of carbon fiber material has powder, short cut, long cut and continuous.
According to the matrix material to divide, there are mainly resin, ceramics, rubber and metal these four kinds, each kind of matrix material has a big difference in performance, which resin matrix is divided into thermosetting and thermoplastic. So the carbon fiber composite material actually contains a relatively large range, and the performance interval is also very large.
In summary,carbon fiber tow and carbon fiber composites are not the same, the former is one of the raw materials for the latter.