Multi-Functional Carbon Fibre Composites using Carbon Nanotubes as an Alternative to Polymer Sizing

Carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP) were introduced to the aerospace, automobile and civil engineering industries for their high strength and low weight. A key feature of CFRP is the polymer sizing - a coating applied to the surface of the carbon fibres to assist handling, improve the interfacial adhesion between fibre and polymer matrix and allow this matrix to wet-out the carbon fibres. In this paper, we introduce an alternative material to the polymer sizing, namely carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the carbon fibres, which in addition imparts electrical and thermal functionality. High quality CNTs are grown at a high density as a result of a 35 nm aluminium interlayer which has previously been shown to minimise diffusion of the catalyst in the carbon fibre substrate. A CNT modified-CFRP show 300%, 450% and 230% improvements in the electrical conductivity on the ‘surface’, ‘through-thickness’ and ‘volume’ directions, respectively. Furthermore, through-thickness thermal conductivity calculations reveal a 107% increase. These improvements suggest the potential of a direct replacement for lightning strike solutions and to enhance the efficiency of current de-icing solutions employed in the aerospace industry

Experimental Evidence for Simple Relations between Unpolarized and Polarized Parton Distributions

The Pauli exclusion principle is advocated for constructing the proton and neutron deep inelastic structure functions in terms of Fermi-Dirac distributions that we parametrize with very few parameters. It allows a fair description of the recent NMC data on $F^p_2(x,Q^2)$ and $F^n_2(x,Q^2)$ at $Q^2=4 GeV^2$, as well as the CCFR neutrino data at $Q^2=3$ and $5 GeV^2$. We also make some reasonable and simple assumptions to relate unpolarized and polarized quark parton distributions and we obtain, with no additional free parameters, the spin dependent structure functions $xg^p_1(x,Q^2)$ and $xg^n_1(x,Q^2)$. Using the correct $Q^2$ evolution, we have checked that they are in excellent agreement with the very recent SMC proton data at $Q^2=10 GeV^2$ and the SLAC neutron data at $Q^2=2 GeV^2$.Comment: 17 pages,CPT-94/P.3032,latex,6 fig available on cpt.univ-mrs.fr directory pub/preprints/94/fundamental-interactions /94-P.303

Fermi-Dirac Distributions for Quark Partons

We propose to use Fermi-Dirac distributions for quark and antiquark partons. It allows a fair description of the $x$-dependence of the very recent NMC data on the proton and neutron structure functions $F_2^p(x)$ and $F_2^n(x)$ at $Q^2=4$ GeV$^2$, as well as the CCFR antiquark distribution $x\overline q(x)$. We show that one can also use a corresponding Bose-Einstein expression to describe consistently the gluon distribution. The Pauli exclusion principle, which has been identified to explain the flavor asymmetry of the light-quark sea of the proton, is advocated to guide us for making a simple construction of the polarized parton distributions. We predict the spin dependent structure functions $g_1^p(x)$ and $g_1^n(x)$ in good agreement with EMC and SLAC data. The quark distributions involve some parameters whose values support well the hypothesis that the violation of the quark parton model sum rules is a consequence of the Pauli principle.Comment: 12 pages,CPT-93/P.2961,latex,6 fig available on cpt.univ-mrs.fr directory pub/preprints/93/fundamental-interactions/93-P.296