The high performance discontinuous fibre (Hiperdif) method for the remanufacturing of mixed length reclaimed carbon fibres

The wide spread of carbon fibres reinforced polymers in various engineering and industrial sectors over the last decades poses the challenge of dealing with production waste and end-of life products. In the case of the thermosetting-based composites, recycling is a two-step process: a reclamation stage, where the fibres are retrieved by degrading the matrix, and a remanufacturing stage to produce a reusable material. Typically, reclamation processes deliver fibres that are fragmented in short length, moreover, these often present a distribution of length and physical or mechanical properties. The HiPerDiF technology allows to deliver commercially valuable and high performance recycled composite materials by remanufacturing the reclaimed fibres into highly aligned discontinuous fibre composites. This paper demonstrates the possibility of simultaneously remanufacture fibres with different lengths. The mechanical properties of the obtained material are characterised with a novel tensile test methodology based on interlaminated hybrid specimens.