What is Carbon Fiber Pipe?

Achievements in technology and industry allow materials science to develop itself. In the light of these developments, there are many functional products that make life easier. One of these products is carbon fiber pipes. These fiber tubes are lightweight and durable products that facilitate many production processes today. This extremely useful product is obtained by combining carbon fibers and has a composite structure. Composed of thin and long chains of carbon atoms, they are often preferred in many areas of industry due to their excellent strength properties. The characteristics of these fiber pipes are as follows:

It has high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios.
High resistance to fatigue.
It shows dimensional stability due to its extremely low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE).
They have protective properties.
X-ray transparency.

Carbon fiber braids are used inside the tubes and joined together with support from polymer resin. These processes during the production process ensure that the resulting product is both light and durable. Given the lightweight and durable nature of these fiber tubes, it is no wonder that they are in high demand in many industries today. The fact that titanium and aluminum pipes are much heavier than these products has changed the preferences in the sector and succeeded in introducing these fiber pipes into all areas of life. These products, which provide easy assembly and long-lasting use in many areas of industry, are used safely as they also provide thermal and electrical insulation. Considering the benefits these products bring to the industry, their use is expected to become even more widespread in the future.

These fiber tubes can be specially processed. For this reason, high-level craftsmanship and the latest technology can be combined in various ways. The shapes that these products can appear in are as follows:

Square carbon fiber tube
Rectangular carbon fiber tube
Hexagonal carbon fiber tube
Oval carbon fiber tube
Conical carbon fiber tube

Carbon Fiber Pipe Usage Areas

These fiber pipes are the shining products of recent times. These products, which are used in more and more areas every day, have many existing areas of use. The most frequently used areas of these products are as follows:

Aerospace: These fiber tubes are widely used in aerospace due to their light weight, high stiffness, high strength, stable size and good thermal conductivity. These tubes are found in solar panels, antennas and artificial satellite structures.
Carbon fiber aircraft: These products also show high performance in UAV projects. If placed in appropriate locations, they can increase the load capacity and durability of these projects.
Sports equipment: From hockey sticks to tennis rackets to golf clubs, you can see these products in many areas. Using this material, many lives have been saved on motor circuits by exploiting the damage tolerance of body structures.
Military: This fiber tube can be found in many security products, as it has properties such as strengthening and weight reduction in military equipment.
Medical applications: Being transparent to X-rays has made these fiber tubes the number one product in medical applications. Imaging equipment used in hospitals to support limbs treated with X-rays and radiation includes this product.
Automobile industry: These pipes are used in the production of Supercar bodies. But the way things are going, it is possible to see these products very widely in the automobile sector.
Environmental applications: These fiber pipes are known to be very good chemical purifiers. The absorption of harmful chemicals can occur in many places. It is also used in water purification systems.

How is Carbon Fiber Pipe Produced?

There are three basic methods to produce these fiber pipes that make both production and usage processes practical in many branches of the industry. We can list these methods as follows:

Pultrusion
Filament winding
Roll wrapping

Pultrusion: Many fiber pipes on the market are produced using this method. In the pultrusion process, the mandrel and carbon fibers are drawn through a machine and cured simultaneously. In the resulting tubes, all fibers run in one perfectly parallel direction. It therefore has a very low torsional resistance. Even the smallest torsional load can be enough to separate the pipe. In addition, drawn tubes are typically heavier (and richer in resin), which also contributes to reduced stiffness. Pultruded pipes have looser tolerances than a roll wound pipe.

Filament winding: This process can be likened to winding fishing line on a fishing reel. This method offers great design flexibility for a variety of applications. The carbon tow is spirally wound around the tube at certain angles. Tubes are slightly less rigid axially in terms of torsion and are products with less rigidity than aluminum, although they are stronger. Filament winding is a more expensive production process than other methods and generally produces a less durable product than other methods. For this reason, the model is not preferred for impact applications such as rocketry, automotive or other structural applications.

Roll wrapping: This is done with a mandrel around which pre-impregnated carbon fiber material is wound and machined very precisely. The hand winding of the base material is followed by a wrapping process in which a cellophane wrap (typically polyester Mylar shrink tape) is carefully wrapped around the diameter of the pipe at a specific tension. We can say that this step is the trick. It is the key to producing a high quality, high performance pipe. After the pipe is wrapped, it is placed in an oven to harden. As the temperature rises, it causes the shrink wrap to contract against the mandrel/ sleeve which tries to expand slightly. The resulting compression pressures are precise, which balances the density and fiber-resin ratio.