Deformation Behavior and Mechanical Properties of Rolled Carbon Fiber Reinforced Al-Matrix Composites Via Protection with Sn Layer

How to break the restriction of elongation mismatch between the continuous carbon fibers and Al matrix in the rolling process has become a major obstacle for developing the rolled carbon fiber reinforced Al matrix (CF/Al) composites with high-performance. Herein, a strategy for liquid protection was proposed to overcome the damage of continuous CFs in rolling process of Al matrix by constructing the CF/Al composites with coating structure of Sn layer ([CF@Sn]/Al composites). The design on the stress distribution and CFs damage in the rolling deformation of [CF@Sn]/Al composites was optimized based on the numerical simulation. The micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) reconstruction indicated that the implantation of Sn can effectively release the stress concentration in CFs to prevent the CFs broken. After the heat treatment, the transition layer with eutectic Al-Sn structure (similar to 550 nm) formed between the Al-matrix and CF-reinforcement, which can be used as weak boundaries, benefits to the load transfer to the CF-reinforcement with an with an increase of 23% in Vickers hardness. More importantly, the tensile strength of rolled [CF@Sn]/Al composites can reach 256 MPa, which are 42.2% and 68.4% higher than that of rolled Al-matrix and rolled CF/Al composites (180 MPa and 152 MPa), respectively. This study could motivate the ingenious design of CFs damage protection for developing the advanced CF/Al composites in the automotive and aerospace industries.