Electrical and impact properties of the hybrid knitted inlaid fabric reinforced polypropylene composites

A range of conductive knitted fabric reinforced polypropylene composites have been developed and their electromagnetic shielding effectiveness (EMSE), electrostatic discharge (ESD) and impact properties have been investigated. Carbon and aramid fibers are used as the reinforcement phase in the composites, while copper and stainless steel wires are incorporated as conductive fillers to provide the ESD and EMSE properties of the composite materials. The hollow spindle spinning system has been used to make SS/PP, Cu/PP, SS/C/PP, Cu/C/PP and Cu/K/PP uncommingled yams. The double plain knitted fabric and its inlaid fabrics were fabricated from the yarns using a 5G traverse knitted machine. Changing the yam composition, fabric knit structure, and stitch density varies the amount of copper and stainless steel conductive fillers in the composites. 4 layer cross-ply laminates were laid-up by hand, then formed into 3-min thick conductive thermoplastic composites using a compression molding. It was observed that the EMSE and ESD of the composites increase with increasing the incident frequency, especially at higher frequency range. The effects of inlaid ends, materials and yam constitutions on the EMSE of the conductive thermoplastic composites were investigated. The results indicate that the composites can be used for the purpose of electromagnetic shielding and ESD attenuation, as well as for some microwave applications. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.