Abstract

Research on nanofiber veils used as reinforcements in composite materials began several years ago and there have been numerous works published on this topic by the research community. However, there is still a long way to go to build a solid knowledge on the behavior of nanofibers in the most common failure mode in carbon fiber composites; the delamination that happens between the tissues of the fibers and the fragile matrices that agglutinate them. The fact of inserting these thermoplastic veils in the delamination region without hardly altering the weight of the composite has proven to be an adequate method to increase the fracture toughness since the beginning of these investigations.

Electrospinning is a versatile and simple technique that allows a tailor-made manufacture of nanofiber veils from a wide variety of polymers, with different morphologies in terms of grammage, nanofiber diameter, etc. One of the most important characteristics of nanofibers is their nanometric scale, which gives them a great surface-volume ratio, high porosity and excellent mechanical performance. This paper shows the influence of the grammage of veils based on polyamide 6 nanofibers and the different ways to achieve the same weight in mechanical properties of the manufactured composites. The results show an improvement in the fracture toughness and in the impact strength when these thermoplastic veils are introduced.