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Jeong-Min Lee 1 and Kyung-Hun Lee 2 and Byung-Min Kim 1 and Seung-Kook An 3 and Dae-Cheol Ko 4
Academic Editor:Jun Yanagimoto
1, Division of Precision and Manufacturing Systems, Pusan National University, San 30, Jangjeon-dong, Geumjeong-gu, Pusan 609-735, Republic of Korea
2, PNU-IFAM Joint Research Center, Pusan National University, San 30, Jangjeon-dong, Geumjeong-gu, Pusan 609-735, Republic of Korea
3, Department of Organic Material Science and Engineering, Pusan National University, San 30, Jangjeon-dong, Geumjeong-gu, Pusan 609-735, Republic of Korea
4, ERC/ITAF, Pusan National University, San 30, Jangjeon-dong, Geumjeong-gu, Pusan 609-735, Republic of Korea
Received 1 February 2014; Accepted 1 May 2014; 22 May 2014
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Due to steadily rising oil prices and environmental regulations, lightweight parts for transportation systems are now in high demand. In particular, to lighten the weight and increase the stiffness of automobile parts presently manufactured with conventional steel materials, lightweight alternative materials such as aluminum, magnesium alloy, and composite materials are being applied. Among them, carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP), a representative lightweight material with specific strength and stiffness superior to metals, is considered to be the material to replace conventional metals.
In general, there are three steps in CFRP manufacturing processes. The steps are (a) stacking prepregs, which are woven fibers impregnated with epoxy resin, in a specific sequence, (b) press forming them into the desired product form, and (c) curing the resin by raising the temperature to 130°C and maintaining it with the prepreg in a press die. Generally, the mechanical properties of CFRP products such as tensile strength and bending stiffness are determined by the prepreg fabric structure and stacking sequences [1-3]. Therefore, various studies on prepreg fabric structure and stacking sequences have been conducted to enhance product strength and stiffness in CFRP product design. Fuhong et al. [4] manufactured a composite product where unidirectional prepregs were [0°/90°] cross-laminated and studied the effect of the structure support point on the product stiffness. Zhang [5] varied the stacking angle of unidirectional prepregs by 15° to get stacking sequences of [0°/±15°/90°] s , [0°/±30°/90°]