A Study on Mechanical Properties of Short Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polycarbonate via an Injection Molding Process

This manuscript is dealt with the synthesis of short carbon fibers reinforced polycarbonate polymer composite by using injection modeling technique. Four different composite materials were obtained by varying the carbon fibers weight percentage of 10, 20, 30 and 40%. The synthesized carbon fibers/polycarbonate composites were characterized for their morphological, mechanical and thermal properties by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), universal testing machine (UTM) and IZOD strength test. The resultant carbon fibers/polycarbonate composites exhibited excellent interfacial adhesion between carbon fibers and polycarbonate resin. The tensile properties were observed to be monotonically increases with increasing carbon fiber content in the composite resin. The tensile strength of carbon fiber/polycarbonate composites with the carbon fiber content 40% were increased about 8 times than that of the pristine polycarbonate matrix. The carbon fibers/polycarbonate composites with 40 wt.% of short carbon fibers exhibited a high tensile strength and thermal conductivity. The incorporation of carbon fiber in to polycarbonate resin resulted in a significant enhancement in the mechanical and the thermal behavior. These studies suggested that the short carbon fiber incorporated polycarbonate composite matrix is a good candidate material for many technological applications.