Instead of using fiber glass cloth could you use carbon fiber cloth to glass your wings. Also if possible is Carbon fiber paintable?

Just wondering. I have a free suply to this stuff

David

Hey Jetspud....

I'll be your newest best buddy if you can get me some of that cloth!!!!!

The fiberglass material used to glass wings and such is very light---In the neighborhood of .55 to .75 ounces/square yard. I don't know of any carbon cloth that is that light. What is the weight of your cloth??? Yes, you can paint over carbon cloth without any problems. Now, how about sharing some of that cloth!!!

Kevin

Spread the love brother!!!

Anyway - If I was to use Carbon Fiber (Bidirectional) to cover wing and surfaces, I not sheet the wing, and surface with balsa - instead I would sheet them with only Carbon Fiber, and resin using the Vacuum Bagging method.

If you do this right - you can sit on it!

Carbon Rules!

...say where you find this stuff again?

Just bought a yard of carbon fiber cloth a square yard was
$ 37.65 You would have a strong but very expensive wing and this cloth was 5.7 oz very thick and heavy probably not what most of want on a wing
Don B

Don,

I've got a yard of the same stuff that you have. WAAAAAY too heavy to use for glassing. There are finer weaves of carbon cloth but it gets expensive----around $60/square yard. The finest that I've been able to find easily is around 2 ounces/square yard. (????) I'm not saying that finer carbon cloth is not made because I don't know----It would seem to be VERY expensive given that the 2 ounce (???) stuff is almost twice as expensive as the 5.7 ounce cloth.

Kevin

You guys are forgetting about the carbon fiber mat, it works well with a layer of 3/4 oz glass over it adds a lot of rigidity to the surface. Most of BVM's composite planes use mat/balsa/glass in the layup. Expensive but very strong and light.

David,

Yeah, I thought about the carbon mat. (Also sometimes called carbon veil) I've got some of that too in the 5 and10/1000 thicknesses. I used the 10 thou on my Balsa Super Bandit in the gear area under the top wing skin to help keep the gear from punching through on a bad landing. (Hopefully, it will never be tested!) Can carbon mat/veil be used instead of glass cloth??? The main purpose of the glass cloth is to stabilize the wood to keep the grain from showing through later. Will the mat stabilize the wood as well or better than glass cloth???

Kevin

Use the Carbon Vail under the .50 oz glass cloth. The cloth will keep the carbon from fuzzing up. Put 'em both on at the same time, practicaly no weight gain over just cloth, but MUCH MUCH stiffer.

All of the above are good ideas, and here's one more idea . . .

Another alternative for glassing over foam is to use uni-directional carbon fabric in the high stress regions, epoxied direct to the foam. Typically the uni-fabric is applied at the wing root. The shape of the uni-directional "patch" at the wing root would look like an ellipse or half of a football's cross section when viewed from above the wing. Uni is only 0.005" thick.

The uni-directional would be oriented with it's fibers parallel to the wing's centerline from root to tip.

Then, epoxy on a layer of 2 oz fiber glass, over the entire wing, with the weave at about a 45 degree to the wing centerline.

Resultant is a very lightweight, stiff and strong structure. Make a sample core this way and see what you think. I believe you'll be impressed.

I reinforced my Eurofighter with T6 H H carbon fiber cloth. I would strongly recomend it cause most of the designs are extremely light. In my opinion this is very risky for a $10,000 plus aircraft.


Also, I would recomend Wes system epoxy, it is what our chemists use and we have had great success with this method. If you want, mixing fiber glass powder with the wes makes it extremely strong and can withstand high stress and G loads ( we have tested it in our wind tunnel).



Cheers