Mechanical Characterization of Carbon Fibres Recycled by Steam Thermolysis: A Statistical Approach

International audienceThe recent development of technologies for recycling carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRPs) leads to the need to evaluate themechanical response of recycled carbon fibres. As these fibres are likely to be degraded during the recycling treatment, it is veryimportant to determine their tensile residual properties so as to evaluate their ability as reinforcement for new compositematerials. Carbon fibres reclaimed by a steam-thermal treatment applied to degrade the epoxy resin matrix of a CFRP are hereanalysed. Two conditions were chosen so as to reach two degradation efficiency levels of the steam thermolysis. Several carbonfibre samples were selected for mechanical testing carried out either on single filaments using single fibre tensile tests or on fibretows using bundle tensile tests. It is shown that the single fibre tensile test leads to a wide variability of statistical parametersderived from the analysis. Bundle tensile tests results were able to indicate that fibre strength of recycled carbon fibre is similar tocorresponding as-received carbon fibres thanks to a statistically relevant database. Wide number of tested filaments enabledindeed to obtain low scatters