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Mechanical and microstructural characterisation of multifunctional structural power composites
(2013)
Although the inherent anisotropy of polymer composites has presented daunting technical challenges, these materials now offer engineers considerable opportunities for efficient structural design. More recently, the advent of multifunctional composites which can fulfill more than one role within a system has attracted considerable interest, providing designers with exciting opportunities to innovate. Of particular interest here are structural power composites, which simultaneously carry mechanical load whilst storing/delivering electrical energy. Although the development of these composites is highly challenging, often with conflicting constituent requirements, the STORAGE consortium has had considerable success in the development of these materials for automotive applications.
The focus of this paper is structural supercapacitors, the basic architecture of a single cell of which is shown in Fig. 1. This entails two carbon fibre woven lamina (electrodes) which sandwich a glass fibre woven lamina (separator), all of which is embedded within a multifunctional matrix (electrolyte). This architecture has been the focus of the research to date, leading to components such as that shown in Fig.1 having been fabricated. This paper reports on the mechanical properties and microstructures of the different reinforcement and matrix combinations for structural supercapacitors.
For the concept of using structural materials such as carbon fibre reinforced plastics as
energy storage devices, new matrix polymers are required. These polymers must provide ionic
conductivity as well as adequate mechanical strength. In the EU-Project StorAGE this
requirements are fulfilled by adding ionic liquid to commercial polymers. The mechanical
properties of these mixtures materials were characterized by using a 3-point-bending device.
In addition, single fibre pull test were performed in order to get information on the interfacial
shear strength. Adding of ionic liquid has an impact on the mechanical performance of the
materials. A decrease of the flexural strength and modulus of less than 10% of the value of the
reference materials took part. The interfacial shear strength decreased to a value of around
one third compare to the reference material.
Multifunctional composites which can fulfil more than one role within a system have attracted considerable interest. This work focusses on structural supercapacitors which simultaneously carry mechanical load whilst storing/delivering electrical energy. Critical mechanical properties (in-plane shear and in-plane compression performance) of two monofunctional and four multifunctional materials were characterised, which gave an insight into the relationships between these properties, the microstructures and fracture processes. The reinforcements included baseline T300 fabric, which was then either grafted or sized with carbon nanotubes, whilst the baseline matrix was MTM57, which was blended with ionic liquid and lithium salt (two concentrations) to imbue multifunctionality. The resulting composites exhibited a high degree of matrix heterogeneity, with the ionic liquid phase preferentially forming at the fibres, resulting in poor matrix-dominated properties. However, fibre-dominated properties were not depressed. Thus, it was demonstrated that these materials can now offer weight savings over conventional monofunctional systems when under modest loading.