Effect of voids on the impact properties of Non-Crimp fabric carbon/epoxy laminates manufactured by liquid composite Moulding

A great effort has been made to quantify the detrimental effect of voids on CFRP, nevertheless, impact properties barely studied and when it considered, always for prepeg materials under low energies (< 6 J). This work focuses quantification NCF plates manufactured by LCM. For this purpose, biaxial (0/90) NCF-Epoxy laminates with different void contents were tested drop weight method. Four LCM variants used obtain at levels: VARTM controlled modified capillary number (0.58 ± 0.18 %), RTM (1.35 0.28 uncontrolled (2.44 0.14 WCM (4.34 0.31 %). The high content samples (WCM) recorded a reduction 25.88% in ultimate fibre failure force Fff, 9.57% dissipated energy Edis as compared (VARTM-Caopt*). Regarding analysis damage tolerance, loss stiffness after impacts ranging from 2.5 J 20 was studied. slightly higher observed VARTM-Caopt*, residual being 45.8% 49.1%, respectively. Therefore, achieve optimum is necessity develop manufacturing processes that approach zero-defect manufacturing.