On the fabrication of carbon fabric reinforced epoxy composite shell without joints and wrinkling

This article describes a simple and cost effective fabrication procedure by using hand lay-up technique that is employed for the manufacturing of thin-walled axi-symmetric composite shell structures with carbon, glass and hybrid woven fabric composite materials. The hand lay-up technique is very commonly used in aerospace and marine industries for making the complicated shell structures. A generic fabrication procedure is presented in this paper aimed at manufacture of plain Carbon Fabric Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) and Glass Fabric Reinforced Plastic (GFRP) shells using hand lay-up process. This paper delivers a technical breakthrough in fabrication of composite shell structures without any joints and wrinkling. The manufacture of stiffened CFRP shells, laminated CFRP shells and hybrid (carbon/glass/epoxy) composite shells which are valued by the aerospace industry for their high strength-to-weight ratio under axial loading have also been addressed in this paper. A fabrication process document which describes the major processing steps of the composite shell manufacturing process has been presented in this paper. A study of microstructure of the glass fabric/epoxy composite, carbon fabric/epoxy composite and hybrid carbon/glass/fabric epoxy composites using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) has been also carried out in this paper.