College of Engineering

Chemical Engineering Department

ChE 453

Composite Science & Engineering

Lecture 2
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Classifications of Materials
With technological progress, natural materials become insufficient to meet increasing demands on product
capabilities and functions.

Classifications of Composites
According to Matrix
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The development of materials over time

The materials of pre-history, on the left,
all occur naturally; the challenge for the
engineers of that era was one of shaping
them.

The development of thermochemistry

and (later) of polymer chemistry
enabled man-made materials, shown in
the colored zones. Three—stone, bronze
and iron—were of such importance that
the era of their dominance is named
after them.
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Historical Perspective
Used in ancient Egypt, Americas, and China
• Straw was used to reinforce bricks
Many natural materials are composites
• Wood, grasses, bones, fingernails, bee hives,
bird nests, deer antlers, etc.

The ancient Egyptians

manufactured composites:
The combination of mud and
It is a composite of strong and flexible
hay forms a composite that is
cellulose fibers (linear polymer)
stronger than either the mud
surrounded and held together by a
or the hay by itself.
matrix of lignin and other polymers.
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COMPOSITE MATERIALS
A composite material is a macroscopic, physical combination of two or more materials in
which one material usually provides reinforcement.

In most composites one material is continuous and is termed the matrix, while the second,
usually discontinuous phase, is termed the reinforcement, in some cases filler is applied.

FUNCTION: Dispersed (reinforcing) phase ...

• The second phase (or phases) is imbedded in the matrix in a continuous or discontinuous
form.
• Dispersed phase is usually stronger than the matrix, therefore it is sometimes called
reinforcing phase.
• Can be one of the three basic materials or an element such as carbon or boron
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COMPOSITE MATERIALS
Matrix material serves several functions in the composite
❑ Provides the bulk form of the part or product
❑ Holds the imbedded phase in place
❑ Shares the load with the secondary phase
❑ Protect the reinforcements from surface damage due to abrasion or chemical effect
❑ Bonding strength between reinforcement and matrix is important
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COMPOSITE MATERIALS
Matrix ...
• The continuous phase, the primary phase
• Purpose is to:
✓ transfer stress to other phases
✓ protect phases from environment
Matrix considerations ...
• End use temperature
• Toughness
• Cosmetic issues
• Flame retardant
• Processing method
• Adhesion requirements
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COMPOSITE MATERIALS
Composite materials- a new emerging class of materials to overcome a current limits of
monolithic of conventional materials

✓ Combination of 2 or more materials

✓ Each of the materials must exist more than 5%
✓ Presence of interphase
✓ The properties shown by the composite materials are differed from the initial materials
✓ Can be produced by various processing techniques
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The Family of Structural Materials

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COMPOSITE MATERIALS
• Composites are not new materials.
• Perhaps the first important engineering structural composite was the mud and hay
reinforced brick.
• Laminated structures such as bows have been used since prehistoric times.
• In the early 1900s doped fabric was employed in early aircraft surfaces.
• Reinforced phenolics were developed in the 1930s and glass-reinforced plastics in the
1940s.
• More recently, emphasis turned to reinforcements, with graphitic and boron-based fibers
developed in the 1960s.
• High-performance aramids, such as Kevlar , were developed in the 1970s. This and the
previous decade have seen new developments in both fiber and matrix with lightweight
aerospace MMCs and high-temperature CMCs showing major advances.
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COMPOSITE MATERIALS
• Composite materials have been utilized to solve technological problems for a long time but only
in the 1960s did these materials start capturing the attention of industries with the introduction of
polymeric-based composites.
• The primary barrier to the use of composite materials is their high initial costs in some cases,
as compared to traditional materials. Regardless of how effective the material will be over its life
cycle, industry considers high upfront costs, particularly when the life-cycle cost is relatively
uncertain.
• In general, the cost of processing composites is high, especially in the hand lay-up process.
Here, raw material costs represent a small fraction of the total cost of a finished product. There is
already evidence of work moving to Asia, Mexico, and Korea for the cases where labor costs are
a significant portion of the total product costs.
• The recycling of composite materials presents a problem when penetrating a high-volume
market such as the automotive industry, where volume production is in the millions of parts per
year. With the new government regulations and environmental awareness, the use of composites
has become a concern and poses a big challenge for recycling.
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Driving Force for Composites

• Common driving forces for the use of composite materials include the ability to save
weight, increase mechanical properties, reduce the number of elements in a component,
obtain a unique combination of properties, and to increase shaping freedom.
• Increasingly, composites are being used for the above while also achieving a reduction in
part cost.
• Many of these driving forces, together with the manufacturing cycle, often offset the
higher raw material costs of the composite constituents to produce a commercially viable
end product.
• The criteria on which composite materials are selected for a particular application are
naturally dependent on the industrial sector for which they are intended.
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Driving Force for Composites Composite materials selection criteria as a

functional of industrial sector

• For example, aerospace has

traditionally been driven by
performance, where longer cycle
times and increased scrap levels were
tolerated, whereas high volume
applications, typified by the
automotive industry, require rapid and
highly automated techniques but
where the full potential of composites
in terms of mechanical properties is
rarely reached.
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COMPOSITE MATERIALS

“If two heads are better than one, could two materials be better than one?” – COMPOSITES
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COMPOSITE MATERIALS
A comparison of the properties of ceramics, metals, and polymers

“If two heads are better than one, could two materials be better than one?” – COMPOSITES
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Classification
of Composites
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Classification of Composites
• Particulate composites: have one or more material particles suspended in a binding
matrix.
• Fibrous composites: have fibers of reinforcing material(s) suspended in binding matrix.

• Particulate composites:
➢ Random orientation: Orientation of particle is randomly distributed in all directions (ex: concrete)
➢ Preferred orientation: Particle orientation is aligned to specific directions (ex: extruded plastics with
reinforcement particles)
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Classification of Composites
• Fibrous Composites: In general, materials tend to have much better thermomechanical
properties at small scale than at macro‐scale. This is shown in the following table.
Material Fiber Tensile Strength (GPa) Bulk Tensile strength( GPa)
Glass 3.5 to 4.6 0.7 ‐ 2.1
Tungsten 4.2 1.1 ‐ 4.1
Beryllium 1.3 0.7
Graphite 2.1 to 2.2.5 Very low
• Fibrous Composites:
➢ Single‐layer: These are actually made of several layers of fibers, all oriented in the same direction.
✓ Continuous and long fibers: Examples include filament and shells.
- Unidirectional reinforcement
- Bidirectional reinforcement
✓ Discontinuous and short‐fibers: Examples include fiber glass bodies of cars.
- Randomly oriented reinforcement
- Reinforced in preferred directions
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Classification of Composites
• Fibrous Composites (continued):

➢ Multi‐layer: Here, reinforcement is

provided, layer by layer in different
directions.

✓ Laminate: Here, the constituent

material in all layers is the same.

✓ Hybrid laminates: These have more

than one constituent materials in the
composite structure.
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Advantages of Composites Strength

• Composites are engineered materials. We can engineer them Modulus
specifically to meet our needs on a case‐to‐case basis. In general, Weight
following properties can be improved by using composite
materials. Fatigue
Vibration damping
Resistance to wear
Electrical conductivity
Thermal conductivity
Behavior at extreme temps.
Acoustical insulation
Aesthetics
Resistance to corrosion
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Limitations of Composites
• Like all things in nature, composites materials have their limitations as well. Some of the important ones are:

❑ Anisotropy: A large number of composites have direction dependent material properties. This makes them more
difficult to understand, analyze and engineer,
❑ Non‐homogenous: Further, these materials by definition are not homogenous. Hence their material properties vary from
point‐to‐point. This factor as well makes them difficult to model and analyze.
❑ Costly: Composite materials are in general expensive. Thus, they are used only in applications where their benefits
outweigh their costs.
❑ Difficult to fabricate: Further, fabricating structures from such materials is difficult, time taking, and expensive.
❑ Sensitivity to temperature: Laminated composites are particularly sensitive to temperature changes. They come in with
residual thermal stresses, because they get fabricated at high temperatures, and then cooled. Such a process locks in
thermal stresses into the structure.
❑ Moisture effects: Laminated composites are also sensitive to moisture, and their performance varies significantly when
exposed to moisture for long periods of time.
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Fibers and Whiskers

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Fibers and Whiskers

• A Fiber has:
➢ High length‐to‐diameter ratio.
➢ The diameter approximates in the range of crystal size.

• Modern composites exploit the fact that small scale samples

of most of the materials are much stronger than bulk
materials. Thus, thin fibers of glass are 200‐500 times
stronger than bulk glass.

• Several types of fibers are available commercially. Some of

the more commonly used fibers are made from materials
such as carbon, glass, Kevlar, steel, and other metals.
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Fibers and Whiskers

Glass is the most popular fiber used in composites since it is relatively inexpensive.
• It comes in two principal varieties; E‐glass, and S‐glass

• Fibers are significantly stronger than bulk materials because:

➢ They have a far more “perfect” structure, i.e. their crystals are aligned along the fiber axis.
➢ There are fewer internal defects, especially in direction normal to fiber orientation, and hence there
are lesser number of dislocations.

• At larger scales, the degree of structural perfection within a material sample is far less that what is present
at small (micro and nano) scales. For this reason fibers of several engineering materials are far more strong
than their equivalent bulk material samples.
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Fibers and Whiskers

• The following table lists bulk as well as fiber properties for different materials. It is seen from the table that the
difference between bulk and fiber strengths is significant.
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Fibers and Whiskers

• Whiskers are similar in diameter to
fibers, but in general, they are short and
have low length‐to diameter ratios.

• The difference in mechanical properties

of a whisker regarding bulk material is
even more obvious. This is because the
degree of perfection in whiskers is even
higher than fibers.

➢ Whiskers are produced by

crystallizing materials on a very
small scale.

➢ Internal alignment within each

whisker is extremely high
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Fibers and Whiskers

• The following table lists bulk as well as whisker properties for different materials. It is seen from the table that the
difference between bulk and whisker strengths is very significant.

• Modern composites derive much of their desired properties by using fibers and whiskers as one of the essential
materials.
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Explore
Explore different types of fiber materials. What fibers would you used with an
objective to:
– Improve thermal conductivity
– Improve electrical conductivity
– Improve mechanical strength
– Improve toughness
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Thank you for your attention!