Carbon Fiber Strand Tensile Failure Dynamic Event Characterization

There are few if any clear, visual, and detailed images of carbon fiber strand failures under tension useful for determining mechanisms, sequences of events, different types of failure modes, etc. available to researchers. This makes discussion of physics of failure difficult. It was also desired to find out whether the test article-to-test rig interface (grip) played a part in some failures. These failures have nothing to do with stress rupture failure, thus representing a source of waste for the larger 13-00912 investigation into that specific failure type. Being able to identify or mitigate any competing failure modes would improve the value of the 13-00912 test data. The beginnings of the solution to these problems lay in obtaining images of strand failures useful for understanding physics of failure and the events leading up to failure. Necessary steps include identifying imaging techniques that result in useful data, using those techniques to home in on where in a strand and when in the sequence of events one should obtain imaging data