13.3. Case study: reduction of residual stresses in carbon/epoxy laminates using carbon nanofibres (CNFs)
In this section, the effect of CNFs on thermal residual stresses in carbon fibre (CF)-reinforced epoxy composites is investigated. First, two-phase CNF/epoxy composites and three-phase CNF/CF/epoxy composites were fabricated and characterized. CNFs were dispersed into the epoxy matrix with three weight ratios of 0.1, 0.5 and 1%, and then reinforced with uni-directional CFs to fabricate laminated composites with cross-ply configuration. The slitting method was employed for the determination of residual stresses in these laminates. A detailed description of these experiments is presented in this section.