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I’ve been reading a book called Fiberglass and Composite Materials by Forbes Aird. It is touted as “an enthusiast’s guide to high performance non-metallic materials for automotive racing and marine use.”
I bought the book to learn more about the materials I was interested in using and possibly start a hobby which would augment another hobby. Although I find the book well written and concise, I find myself rereading sentences and even chapters. To that end and the fact a separate facility would be needed by me for such an endeavor, I will not be fashioning parts any time soon.
I continue to read and reread the book. Below is the best I can do in summarizing what this book has to offer for the thread at hand.
There are sections dealing with tensile strength, tensile stress, compressive strength, ductility, brittleness, strain, yielding, shear, fatigue under major and minor stress, fatigue resistance, fatigue loading, endurance limit, stiffness, specific strength, specific stiffness, consistency of material properties, and bending. Oh, and that’s just Chapters 13 and 14.
Chapter Six addresses health and safety, but mostly in the vein working with the materials in a shop situation. Safety tips are further imbedded in other chapters as well.
The first time CF was used in a race car application was in 1968 when small amounts were used to provide local stiffening in the glass fiber body panels on the Ford GT40 that won the Le Mans 24-hour race. CF is now the principal material used in the construction of the chassis tubs of all Formula One and Indy race cars.
Kevlar (DuPont’s registered trademark for aramid) is widely applied in race car construction as a hedge against the brittleness of carbon when combined with CF. “Indeed, much of the credit granted by TV race announcers to the ‘incredible strength of carbon fiber chassis’ following a race car accident should, in fact, be attributed to the aramid that is almost always visible flapping around the crumpled parts of the car. You won’t see much crumpled carbon fiber in such cases--it just explodes into dust when it is grossly overloaded in this way.”
So where does that leave us?
In the passage I quoted above, to me, the operative phrase is “grossly overloaded.” I hope to never be in an accident in any car that is this violent. My plans were to use CF on my future 1303 for the trunk lid, engine lid, running boards, headlamp rims, and inside door panels. If I’m in an accident in which CF splinters from the either lid, either running board, or either headlight ring enters the cab of my Super Beetle, I will have other concerns like will I regain consciousness, will I walk again, who can I sue (just kidding), etc.
Since reading the warning which started this thread, I am now having second thoughts about the door panels, however. Being T-boned is not out of the question, and I can visualize enough of an impact where splinters could become the major concern.
That being said, I am open to changing my plans depending on further evidence. A curious footnote is AFRP (aramid fiber reinforced plastic) is lighter and stronger than CFRP.
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