Engineering Commons^™

Jcati Carbon Fiber Recycler: Crusher System, Devin Riley

All Undergraduate Projects

With a substantial rise in Carbon Fiber use across all industries, the need for a way to recycle the waste has grown as well. A group of Mechanical Engineering Technology students at Central Washington University funded by the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology (JCATI) have created a machine to recycle waste wing trimmings from the Boeing company’s airplanes. This machine consists of 5 different sub-assemblies being the oven, crusher, gear train, conveyor, and shredder. The purpose of this project was to decrease the deflection in the crusher caused by bulging in the housing and movement of the bearings. To decrease …

Jcati Carbon Fiber Recycler: Oven Heating System, Kezyah Mantanona

All Undergraduate Projects

Central Washington University Mechanical Engineering Technology students are working with the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI) to create a device that recycles carbon fiber wing trimmings produced by the wing manufacturing process for the Boeing 777 airplanes. The solution to this problem was to utilize crushing, shredding, and pyrolysis to remove the resin from the composite material and provide carbon fiber that can be repurposed. This project focuses on both the Oven Enclosure which will house the Oven Heating System as well as the heating elements and control circuit that are responsible for allowing the material to reach …

Jcati Crusher Drive Train, Matthew Denchel

All Undergraduate Projects

This project is sponsored by JCATI (Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation) to research and manufacture a machine to recycle strips of carbon fiber from retired aircraft wings. The drive train powering the crushing wheels was not delivering enough power into the crushing wheels to completely delaminate the strips of carbon fiber. Another issue experienced was the spur gears transferring power between crushing shafts failed.

This issue was first approached by analyzing the gear reduction ratio powering the crushing wheels. Then the next analysis was performed to find the amount of torque required to delaminate the carbon fiber. The minimum …

Jcati Carbon Fiber Recycler: Oven Heating System, Sean Tomkins

All Undergraduate Projects

What happens to carbon fiber from airline wing tips when their service life ends, and they get replaced? Throwing them away would be wasteful, the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI) project can extract the carbon fiber from airline wing tips to be recycled. The JCATI project is a continuation from the work done by previous senior class engineering students and has a new set of issues to be addressed each year. This year there was a need for a new oven system for the JCATI carbon fiber recycler with this project’s focus being on designing the oven’s heating …

Jcati Carbon Fiber Shredder 2022, Parker Sudderth

All Undergraduate Projects

This project is a potential solution to keep the carbon fiber waste from airplane manufacturing to a minimum, sponsored by the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI). The design and assembly will be scalable for future industry application. The overall design of the whole carbon fiber recycler consists of a crusher, shredder, and oven. This report is on the caron fiber shredder module. The shredder is tasked with being able to shred the delaminated carbon fiber scrap that directly comes from the crusher. The operation must produce shreds in the proper size to be gathered and delivered to the …

Jcati - Drive System, Tim Boswell

All Undergraduate Projects

Each year, Mechanical Engineering Technology students receive a grant from The Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI) to engineer a device that is capable of breaking down carbon fiber trimmings for recycling. The students who received the grant this year have redesigned portions of the existing system in an attempt to solve issues that have kept the system from working properly in the past. Though much collaboration between group members has been needed, each member has been responsible for their own portion of the project. The purpose of this portion of the project has been to address binding and …

Jcati Base Plate, Jacob Atamian

All Undergraduate Projects

Students of the Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) program at Central Washington University have contributed to an ongoing Carbon Fiber Recycler project funded by the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI). The goal of this project was to modify the existing recycling system to produce a higher success rate of recycled carbon composite material. This report focuses on increasing the rigidity of the crushing gears so that the deflection occurring among the components during operation was below 0.005 inches to ensure proper operating conditions. The operating speed of the crushing gears was 2.5 rpm with a crushing load of 10,500 …

Jcati Pyrolysis System, Jack Dutton

All Undergraduate Projects

The Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI) project is designed to recycle carbon fiber pieces for use in manufacturing. Part of the system requires the removal of resin from the carbon fibers to facilitate the recycling of carbon fiber. To accomplish this task the pyrolysis process is implemented using a commercial grade oven with a conveyor system. Argon gas is injected into the shroud and over the oven to purge the interior of oxygen. The conveyor system enables this to be a batch process. A ramp is used to allow simple addition of material to the conveyor system and …

Design And Analysis Of One-Piece 10” Carbon Fiber Wheels For Zips Racing Zr20 Formula Sae Racecar, Patrick Kruse, Henry J. Wathen, Jordan J. Hyde, Nicholas D. Dobben, Jordan D. Blake

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Reducing the weight of a vehicle in racing can substantially improve the vehicle dynamics and general performance capabilities. More specifically, the reduction of the unsprung corner weight can provide noticeable performance gains in handling and responsiveness, leading to a quicker, more agile car due to a lower yawing moment of inertia. Unsprung weight reduction also improves the car’s ability to maintain contact between the tires and the road surface for a more consistent grip. In this project we identified the loads that act on the wheel rims according to the data collected from the sensors in the car’s suspension, and …

Prediction And Validation Of Continuous Fiber Stiffened Plates Manufactured With Continuous Fiber Fabrication, Nabeel Ahmed Khan

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to develop an analytical method for predicting the structural properties of continuous fiber stiffened plates, which was then validated both experimentally and via finite element analysis. The MarkForged Mark Two 3D printer enables parts to be printed with continuous carbon fibers embedded within them. A manufacturing process was developed for printing stiffened grids with our without skins, with continuous fiber reinforcement on the top and bottom of the stiffening ribs, which allows bending stiffness can be maximized. An orthotropic grid was printed using Continues Filament Fabrication (CFF), an additive manufacturing process that embeds reinforcing …

Effects Of Material Characteristics And Equipment Configuration On Profilometry Scanning Results For Error Mitigation In Automated Fiber Placement, Jacob Ondeck

Theses and Dissertations

The Automated Fiber Placement manufacturing process is a method for constructing layered composite parts. This is done by placing tapes of material on a tool using a compaction roller and heat to tackify the material [1]. This manufacturing process is not new, but latest equipment generations can still introduce randomly occurring defects, presenting often as tow twists, gaps, unintentional overlaps and even missing tows during the layup process. These defects deviate the manufactured structure from the as-designed structure, and have been proven to introduce stress concentration sources, which can ultimately undermine the performance of a structure [2]. To detect and …

Carbon Fiber Recycler : Fiber Reclaimer, Alexander Edwards

All Undergraduate Projects

Boeing uses composite components for the 777x aircraft. The production of composite parts results in flashing (excess material) that must be trimmed and "thrown away" as scrap. Boeing is investigating means of recycling these scraps. The method proposed for this project is to delaminate and shred the composite material. The delamination process uses a ram to press two claw shaped devices together that bends and deforms the material in opposite directions. The chipper process uses counter rotating saw blades spaced 1/8” apart to produce small shredded material. This shredding material is pyrolyzed (heated) to decay the resin leaving the carbon …

Carbon Fiber Monocoque, Dan Brown, Leland Hoffman

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The University of Akron’s Human Powered Vehicle Team designed a high performing, fully functioning vehicle that is safe, efficient, and practical for the 2018-2019 season. These objectives were the main priorities when it came to the initial stages of designing the vehicle. In addition, the vehicle was designed in accordance with the ASME 2019 Human Powered Vehicle Challenge guidelines to satisfy all the rules and requirements. Additional priorities have been created to teach practical engineering skills and techniques to the students participating in the project through different points in the production process including research, vehicle design, construction, and testing.

The …

Repurposing Carbon Fiber Composite Through Mechanical Means, Jason Morrow

All Undergraduate Projects

Composite waste from the 777 aircraft is a growing concern for Boeing and amounts to an excess of 600,000 pounds of highly valuable carbon fiber being thrown away. Reclaiming this material has been a long sought-after goal of Boeings as the current solution is ever expanding landfills. The two current methods of recycling composite waste are chemically and mechanically processing. The focus of this paper will be demonstrating the feasibility of mechanically processing composite waste to increase storage efficiency before chemically treating to reclaim the actual carbon fibers. This paper provides a two-stage solution for the recycling question. The first …

The Limits & Effects Of Draw On Properties And Morphology Of Pan-Based Precursor And The Resultant Carbon Fibers, Sarah Edrington

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

The process, structure, and property relationship of PAN fiber as a precursor to carbon fiber was studied. The limitations of stable spinning and property improvement associated with hot draw in solution spinning were found and quantified. Conditions were varied to generated precursor fiber up to the limit of draw, from which actual samples were collected for thermal conversion to carbon fiber. Samples of PAN and subsequent carbon fiber were characterized using tensile testing and x-ray analysis. The effects of draw on modulus and break stress, as well as the orientation of the crystalline structure of both parent precursor and resultant …

Fiber Length Attrition In Additive Manufacturing, Michael Chapiro

Materials Engineering

Chopped carbon fibers are used as reinforcements in thermoplastics, but the viscous shear forces that arise in melt-processing reduces the fiber length well below its critical length resulting in only moderate strength and stiffness gains compared to the neat resin. This research project aimed to experimentally determine the effect of the melt–flow portion of a single-screw- extrusion process on carbon fiber length attrition in isolation from the immediately preceding screw–plastication step that is responsible for most of the heat needed for melting. Carbon fibers with an initial length of 2 mm were stirred into 5,000 centipoise and 10,000 centipoise silicone …

Ultra-Light Bear Canister, Naveen Beasley, Eli Rogers, Cory Wilson, Donald Wood

Mechanical Engineering

A bear canister is the primary tool used by outdoor enthusiasts to protect their food from bears while camping or backpacking. There are many effective products currently on the market, however many are not designed with reduced weight in mind. Hardcore backpackers want to have the lightest gear possible to ease the strain of carrying a large pack for sometimes weeks at a time.

Current bear canisters exist that utilize carbon fiber for weight reduction, however they rely on stock carbon tubes and lack engineering analysis, and no competitor has a fully composite bear canister available. Our sponsor, Nick Hellewell, …

Finite Element Modeling Of Delamination Damage In Carbon Fiber Laminates Subject To Low-Velocity Impact And Comparison With Experimental Impact Tests Using Nondestructive Vibrothermography Evaluation, George Rodriguez Iv

Master's Theses

Carbon fiber reinforced composites are utilized in many design applications where high strength, low weight, and/or high stiffness are required. While composite materials can provide high strength and stiffness-to-weight ratios, they are also more complicated to analyze due to their inhomogeneous nature. One important failure mode of composite structures is delamination. This failure mode is common when composite laminates are subject to impact loading.

Various finite element methods for analyzing delamination exist. In this research, a modeling strategy based on contact tiebreak definitions in LS-DYNA^®was used. A finite element model of a low-velocity impact event was created to …

Anisotropic Electrical Response Of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composite Materials, Mohammad Faisal Haider

Theses and Dissertations

Composites materials are often subjected to multi-physical conditions in different applications where, in addition to mechanical loads, they also need to sustain other types of loads such as electrical currents. The multi-physical behavior of composites needs to be understood and analyzed to facilitate new multi-functional material design. An essential first step towards this goal is to understand how multi-physics properties depend on local details (e.g. micro-structure). Composite materials have heterogeneous electrical properties (carbon/epoxy) at the local level that can be different at the global level. To conduct the multi-physics study, the electrical signal is employed to the composite sample for …

The Use Of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Aluminum To Stiffen A Portaledge Structure, Jacob Palmer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Increased stiffness will be achieved through a unidirectional carbon fiber tube that will encase the aluminum tubing. This will give the structure the stiffness it needs to resist bending enabling the elimination of the spreader bar, while still maintaining the ductile material properties of the 6061 T-6 aluminum.

Composite Tie Rod Research, Design And Testing For Sae Baja, Amanda M. Nauman

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Composite materials have become increasing popular in recent years. For the Baja SAE team, composites are typically only used for body panels. To grow as a team and to earn additional points in design competition, it was decided to explore composite use in mechanical applications, specifically for the tie rods. Research was conducted, looking into composite materials basics, types, and material properties. Additionally, manufacturing was explored, including a few projects separate from the tie rod application. 3D models were created after the materials were selected, and FEA analysis was conducted on the parts. Once theoretical testing was finished, the physical …

Lightweight, High-Temperature Radiator For In-Space Nuclear-Electric Power And Propulsion, Briana N. Tomboulian

Doctoral Dissertations

The desire to explore deep space destinations with high-power and high-speed spacecraft inspired this work. Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP), shown to provide orders of magnitude higher specific impulse and propulsion efficiency over traditional chemical rockets, has been identified as an enabling technology for this goal. One of large obstacle to launching an NEP vehicle is total mass. Increasing the specific power (kW/kg) of the heat radiator component is necessary to meet NASA’s mass targets. This work evaluated a novel lightweight, high-temperature carbon fiber radiator designed to meet the mass requirements of future NEP missions. The research is grouped into three …

Characterization Of Carbon-Fiber Reinforced Polyetherimide Thermoplastic Composites Using Mechanical And Ultrasonic Methods, Mohannad A. Alhaidri

Theses and Dissertations

Continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastics (CFRT) have the potential for being a mass-produced material for high-performance applications. The primary challenge of using CFRT is achieving fiber wet-out due to the high viscosity of thermoplastics. This results in higher temperatures and pressures required for processing the composites. Co-mingling thermoplastic fibers with a reinforcing fiber, potentially, can enable better wetting by reducing the distance the matrix needs to flow. This could result in shorter cycle times and better consolidation at lower temperatures and pressures. In this study, a polyetherimide (PEI) fiber was comingled with carbon fibers (CF). The resultant fibers were woven into fabrics …

Biaxial & Twist Testing Of Composite Carbon-Fiber Sandwich Panels For Automotive Racing Vehicles, Erik Eckberg

Materials Engineering

Composite sandwich panels were constructed with 4-ply plain weave carbon-fiber/epoxy face sheets in the 0^o/45^o/0^o/45^o orientation and 1/8^th inch Nomex honeycomb core. The panels were cut into 5-inch square test plates for mechanical testing. All testing was done on a fixture designed and fabricated by Pratt & Miller Engineering and installed on an Instron testing system at Cal Poly. The twist test was performed by supporting diagonal corners of the plate while simultaneously loading the opposite two corners at a crosshead rate of .06 in/min (ASTM 3044-94R11). Out of 10 panels tested, …

Temperature And Strain Controlled Optimization Of Stabilization Of Polyacrylonitrile Precursor Fibers, Mark Parr Taylor

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

Carbon fiber is one of the leading materials for high strength and modulus, and light weight applications. Improvements in carbon fiber properties are directly dependent on all aspects of manufacture, especially the process of stabilization. Therefore, it is the goal of this thesis to study the effects of the temperature and strain profile of the stabilization process, and the resulting carbon fiber tensile properties. In addition, the precursor fibers used were spun under two different draw ratios, to study the effects of the spinning parameters. Results indicated through DMA studies that completeness of stabilization reactions can be gauged by the …

Cal Poly Human Powered Helicopter, Josiah Auer, Eric Behne, Dave Berry, Rebecca Hennings, James Koch, Ian Marquardt, Josiah Mayfield, Sean Miller

Mechanical Engineering

The following report encompasses the Cal Poly Human Powered Helicopter team’s efforts during the 2010-2011 academic year. The intention of this project is to further the knowledge of human powered helicopter design and to validate an ideal configuration through experimental tests and analysis.

A. Background

The Sikorsky Prize offered by the American Helicopter Society has been the catalyst for many attempts at Human Powered Helicopter (HPH) flight. The requirement to win the prize is a continuous, human powered flight of more than 60 seconds that stays within a 10 meter square box and reaches an altitude greater than 3 meters …

Bench-Scale, Multifilament Spinning Conditions Effect On The Structure And Properties Of Polyacrylonitrile Precursor Fiber, Elizabeth Ashley Morris

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Due to its unique characteristics, carbon fiber is one of the leading materials for light weight, high strength and stiffness applications in composite materials. The development of carbon fibers approaching theoretical strengths and stiffness is a continuing process which has led to improved mechanical and physical properties over the recent years. Improvements in carbon fiber properties are directly dependent on the quality of the precursor fiber. Research and development of PAN precursor fiber requires extensive experimentation to determine how processing conditions affect the structure and properties of the precursor fibers. Therefore, it is the goal of this thesis to analyze …

Supermileage Seat And Wheel Development And Production: Final Report, James Casey Alvernaz, Verent Chan, Brian Hamstrom, David Lewis, James Sciaini

Mechanical Engineering

This report documents the design and manufacturing efforts of the Cal Poly senior project team Central Coast Composites. It details the design, analysis and manufacturing of a composite seat and wheels for the Cal Poly Supermileage team. It further outlines suggestions for future efforts to manufacture composite wheels for Cal Poly Supermileage team's Urban Concept Vehicle.

Manufacture, Characterization, And Application Of Multiwall Carbon Nanotube Composite Crylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene, Daniel Ray Bortz

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Carbon nanotubes have been studied for nearly two decades and their amazing properties continue to spur intense investigation in the area of polymer composites. In terms of potential commercialization, mutiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are currently the most prevalent and economically viable form of nanotubes. Uncovering innovative means to take full advantage of their properties remains a fundamental issue. In this thesis, viability of their use to reinforce polymeric systems is reported. Acrylonitrilebutadiene- styrene (ABS) was used as the host matrix. MWCNTs were introduced to the ABS matrix via melt compounding. The resulting composite was thoroughly rheologically, thermally, and mechanically characterized. …