Title: Atomistic structure of a PAN-based carbon fibre constructed by molecular dynamics simulations and lifetime measurement of positron annihilation

Authors: Akihiko Ito; Shingo Okamoto

Addresses: Composite Materials Research Laboratories, Toray Industries, Inc., 1515, Tsutsui Masaki-cho, Iyogun, Ehime, 791-3193, Japan ' Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ehime University, 3 Bunkyo-cho, Matsuyama-city, 790-8577, Japan

Abstract: We evaluated the size distribution of defects in three types of PAN-based carbon fibres with the different Young's modulus using the lifetime measurement of positron annihilation. It was found that the average lifetimes of positron were around 400 ps in all cases corresponding to the defect size composed by nine or more atoms. In our previous research, we proposed the PAN-based carbon fibre model whose basic physical properties, such as orientation parameter, crystallinity, Young's modulus, and thermal conductivity were nearly identical to those of real carbon fibres using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. In the present work, we constructed the more precise structure model for a PAN-based carbon fibre considering the results of lifetime measurement of positron annihilation. We finally determined that the intrinsic strength was 16 GPa using MD simulation on the tensile loading of PAN-based carbon fibre model.

Keywords: PAN; polyacrylonitrile; carbon fibres; positron annihilation; molecular dynamics; tensile loading; atomistic structure; simulation; lifetime measurement; defect size; atoms; carbon fibre structure; modelling; intrinsic strength; carbon fibre defects.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSA.2015.070382

International Journal of Sustainable Aviation, 2015 Vol.1 No.3, pp.269 - 287

Received: 11 Sep 2014
Accepted: 22 Jan 2015
Published online: 03 Jul 2015 *

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