Development of a new hybrid yarn construction from recycled carbon fibres for high-performance composites: Part IV: Measurement of recycled carbon fibre length

Due to the increasing application of carbon fibre–reinforced plastics, the use of recycled carbon fibres can help reduce the tremendous amount of carbon fibre waste growing worldwide. In this context, the processing of longer recycled carbon fibres (>40 mm mean length) into hybrid yarn constructions offers a promising solution. The characterisation of recycled carbon fibre length is essential for textile processes. However, to suit the atypical fibre characteristics of recycled carbon fibres compared to standard natural or man-made-fibres, the development of an adequate measuring technique is required. Investigations on the state of the art suggest that an adapted fibrograph method might pose an appropriate measuring system. Therefore, new test equipment and an alternative image analysing method based on pixel greyscale values were developed. To enable a calibration process, different samples with cut carbon fibre from carded and drafted slivers were intensively tested and compared. In addition, an adapted reference method was investigated by combining single fibre measurement and image processing techniques. In a final step, recycled carbon fibres samples with unknown fibre length were tested. Results proved that the presented measuring system is adequate for the testing of longer recycled carbon fibres in webs or slivers. All measured values were close to the measured reference length values (deviation ±4%).