High strength and low weight hollow carbon fibres

Carbon fibres have strengths of 2.5 to 5 GPa in the fibre direction and an elastic modulus of 200 to 500 GPa. Carbon fibres have equal mechanical properties as steel but 20% of the weight. But the material is more expensive than steel. Therefore, they are only used in industry sectors where the benefits legitimate the high costs. The use of hollow rather than solid fibres allows an even lower weight of the components. At the same time, similar mechanical properties are achieved by the circular cross section. Carbon fibres are obtained from polyacrylonitrile fibers (PAN). These can be produced as hollow fibres. As a first step stabilization and carbonization of hollow PAN precursors is investigated to produce hollow carbon fibres. (paper)