Abstract
The development of fiber reinforced polymer composite (FRPC) has become essential owing to their exceptional mechanical, physical, and chemical properties. It includes high strength and stiffness to weight ratio, high corrosion resistance, better fatigue resistance against cyclic loading, remarkable corrosion resistance, and better dimensional stability in critical environment conditions. The demand of FRPCs has become essential in aerospace, marine, wind energy, and military sector. Several fabrication methods are available to fabricate FRPCs, such as resin transfer molding (RTM), high pressure-RTM (HP-RTM), compression molding, vacuum-assisted resin infusion microwave curing (VARIMC), and many more. For curing laminates conventional heating and microwave heating have been used. The factors degree of cure, interfacial adhesion of fiber and matrix, curing rate, and curing temperature are critical, and mechanical properties are influenced by these. The mechanical tests (tensile test, 3-point bending test, pull out test, fatigue test, etc.) were performed to determine various mechanical properties of FRPCs. The degree of cure was determined by DSC analysis. The SEM analysis was done for the fractured surface for the understanding of microstructure of FRPCs. The matrix cracking, fiber fracture, debonding between fiber and matrix or poor adhesion, and delamination of laminates were the leading causes of failure. The challenges and applications are also discussed.
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Credit Authorship Contribution Statement
Rajeev Kumar: Conceptualization, methodology, writing (original draft), data curation, and investigation. Manjeet Rani: Data curation, visualization, and investigation. Sunny Zafar: Funding acquisition, supervision, writing, review, and editing.
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Kumar, R., Rani, M., Zafar, S. (2022). Microwave-Based Manufacturing of Epoxy/Fiber Composites. In: Mavinkere Rangappa, S., Parameswaranpillai, J., Siengchin, S., Thomas, S. (eds) Handbook of Epoxy/Fiber Composites . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3603-6_54
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