Strength Distribution Comparison of Aerospace and Wind Energy Carbon Fiber Reinforced Epoxy

As wind turbines continue to grow in size, the wind energy industry increasingly looks to carbon fiber composites as a way to meet demanding weight and stiffness requirements. In general, wind energy carbon fiber tends to be large-tow standard-modulus carbon fiber manufactured as economically as possible. This focus has the potential to produce properties and property distributions unique to wind energy material. Property distribution information is critical for predicting the reliability of wind turbines. Unfortunately, limited distribution data is available and even less addresses behavior unique to the wind energy industry. In this study 90° off-axis tensile strength distributions were measured from micro-tensile tests performed on wind energy and aerospace preimpregnated carbon/epoxy. This data highlights any unique characteristics of wind energy material that must be taken into consideration during the design process. In addition, specimen microstructures were imaged using fluorescent optical microscopy to identify microstructural defects that may influence the strength distributions. This could lead to the identification of processing parameters that could improve reliability of wind turbines in the future.