Inquiry #2
How is carbon fiber made?
Discovered by Roger Bacon in the 1950s while he was experimenting with pressurizing graphite at Union Carbide’s Parma Technical Center. Carbon is very light, has high tensile strength, like spider web, and is wovensimilar to ropes. It is very expensive. It is made from polyacrylonitrile heated and pressurized in an oxygen free environment but manufacturing cost is high.
Carbon fibers can have tensile modulus of up to 145 million pounds per square inch. Steel has a tensile strength of 29 million psi, making carbon fiber up to 5 times stronger than steel. The raw materials that make carbon fiber are called precursors, all of which are organic polymers, which are long strings of molecules bound together by carbon atoms. The precursor is pulled into a long, thin strand and heated to a high temperature without oxygen so it cannot burn. The strand vibrates violently, and expells the molecules, leaving tightly woven fibers of carbon, which are then coated to protect them when they are woven.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18w-XOhMCzXFGi2QG8COy9NF0n56eaB9p-DufOKVb0IY/edit?usp=sharing
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