2016, European Conference on Composite Materials, ECCM. All rights reserved. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) can be an ideal reinforcement for polymers and polymer composites due to their sustainability and high specific modulus and strength. A challenge toward using CNC in composite manufacturing industries is to identify a simple technique to incorporate CNC in large scale production lines. In this study, CNC are incorporated as a fiber coating in short glass fiber/epoxy composites prior to use in a sheet molding compound (SMC) line. The employed coating method is similar to the fiber sizing technique commonly used and thus it can be easily scaled and integrated to the SMC line. In order to determine the optimum amount of CNC prior to the manufacturing of the CNC containing SMC composites, chopped GF rovings were coated with CNC by immersing the GF in CNC (0-5 wt%) aqueous suspensions and composites were made with the CNC coated glass fibers manual mixing and casting method. Incorporation of small amount of CNC in the composite resulted in enhancement of the interfacial shear strength, thermomechanical properties and elastic and flexural modulus and strength.
