Study of Damage Prediction of Carbon Fiber Tows Using Eddy Current Measurement

When manufacturing fiber-reinforced composites, it is possible to improve the quality of fiber steel fire and reduce the number of cracks in the finished product if it is possible to quickly identify the defects of the fiber tow. Therefore, in this study, we developed a method to identify the condition of carbon fiber tow using eddy current test (ECT), which is used to improve the quality of composite materials. Using the eddy current detection sensor, we checked the impedance results according to the condition of the CF tow. We found that the materials of the workbench used in the experiment greatly affected the ECT results, so it is necessary to use a material with a non-conductive and smooth surface. We evaluated the impedance results of the carbon fiber at 2 mm intervals using the ECT sensor and summarized the impedance results according to the fiber width direction, presenting the condition of the section as a constant of variation (CV). If the condition of the carbon fiber tow was unstable, the deviation of the CV per section was large. In particular, the deviation of the CV per section was more than 0.15 when the arrangement of the fibers was changed, foreign substances were formed on the surface of the fibers, and damage occurred in the direction of the fiber width of more than 4 mm, so it was easy to evaluate the quality on CF tow.