Proceedings of the Thirty-second (2022) International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference
Shanghai, China, June 5–10, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-81-4; ISSN 1098-6189

www.isope.org

Study on properties of continuous carbon fiber prepreg filament reinforced
composites based on 3D printing
Angang Wang1, Ji Wang1,2,3, Yujun Liu1, Rui Li1, Xiao Liu1, Huibin Li1, Gengrui Hao1, Chenlong Li1
1. School of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
2. Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Ship and Deep-sea Exploration, China
3. State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, China

ABSTRACT

components by point-by-point, line-by-line and layer-by-layer stackingof materials in the three-dimensional direction based on the digitalmodel of the intended component (Lee, An and Chua, 2017). Countries
all over the world attach great importance to the application anddevelopment of 3D printing technology in military, national defense,
space and medical fields, and give key support to 3D printing
technology as a growth point of high-tech technology development inthe future (Nannan and Leu, 2013; Pervaiz, Qureshi, Kashwani andKannan, 2021). With the continuous development of 3D printing
technology in recent years, the application of 3D printing has gradually
expanded from the main battlefield of “aerospace and medical” to theMarine, oil and gas development, automobile and other industrial fields(Thompson, Moroni, Vaneker, Fadel, Campbell, Gibson, Bernard,Schulz, Graf, Ahuja and Martina, 2016).

Continuous carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic resin composites(CFRTPCs) are widely used in various fields due to their advantages oflight weight and high strength. In the 3D printing process of composite
materials, carbon fiber is used as reinforcement, and the interface
bonding performance between carbon fiber and resin is a key factor
affecting the mechanical properties of materials. In order to improvethe mechanical properties of 3D printed continuous carbon fiber
reinforced polycarbonate (PC) composites, the continuous carbon fiber
was pretreated with different concentrations of water-based PC sizing
agent, and studied the influence rule of sizing agent concentration
change on sizing quantity of continuous carbon fiber. By using
polycarbonate as the matrix, print the composite structural parts with
continuous carbon fiber and different sizing amount of carbon fiber
prepreg filament as the reinforcements respectively. Then, the surface
morphology of continuous carbon fiber before and after sizing wasobserved and compared, and the effect of sizing treatment on themechanical properties of the composite was analyzed. The results
showed that with the increase of sizing agent concentration, the sizing
amount of continuous carbon fiber increased, but the increase graduallyslowed down, and the surface roughness of continuous carbon fiber
after sizing increased, and the internal single filament interface wasimproved. The mechanical properties of prepreg filament composites
with different sizing amount are improved compared with those ofcarbon fiber original filament composites. Under the experimentalconditions described in this paper, the 29.59% sizing amountcorresponding to 40% sizing agent is the optimal sizing amount ofcontinuous carbon fiber. Compared with the original carbon fiber
filament composite, the flexural strength, flexural modulus, tensile
strength, interlaminar shear strength and impact strength of the optimal
prepreg filament composite were increased by 15.82%, 75.58%, 90.9%,57.22% and 56.45%, respectively.

Carbon fiber has rapidly developed into an important reinforcement
fiber material because of its high strength-weight ratio, high modulus,corrosion resistance, high temperature resistance, fatigue resistance anda series of excellent properties (Dilsiz and Wightman, 1999; Hu, Su,
Wang and Xie, 2010; Kim, An, Yoon, Jo, Moon and Bae, 2010;
Parandoush and Lin, 2017; Umanath, Prabhu, Yuvaraj and Devika,2020; Zhou, Li, Cheng and Zhang, 2019). Among carbon fiber
reinforced composites, resin matrix composites have the advantages oflight weight, high strength and designability, which can be used as animportant load-bearing component to greatly reduce product mass, costand energy consumption. Therefore, it is widely used in aerospace,automobile, military industry and other fields (David-West, Nash andBanks, 2005; Macias, Bante-Guerra, Cervantes-Alvarez, RodriguezGattorno, Ares-Muzio, Romero-Paredes, Arancibia-Bulnes, RamosSanchez, Villafan-Vidales, Ordonez-Miranda, Li Voti and AlvaradoGil, 2019; Yang, Tian, Liu, Cao and Li, 2017). Compared withthermosetting resin matrix composites, thermoplastic resin matrix
composites have the characteristics of large toughness, good damage
tolerance, easy forming and processing, making thermoplastic resin
matrix composites more competitive, so fiber reinforced thermoplastic
composites develop rapidly (Fu and Yao, 2021; Ren, Yu, Yang, Xinand He, 2017). Compared with staple and long fiber reinforcedthermoplastic composites, continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic
composites have more excellent mechanical properties. Due to its
advantages of light weight and corrosion resistance, it can not only be

KEY WORDS: 3D Printing; carbon fiber; composite material;mechanical property.

INTRODUCTION
3D printing is an innovative manufacturing technology that makes solid3003