Fiber coating method
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorGregory Scot Corman
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A coating is applied to reinforcing fibers arranged into a tow by coaxially aligning the tow with an adjacent separation layer and winding or wrapping the tow and separation layer onto a support structure in an interleaved manner so that the separation layer separates a wrap of the tow from an adjacent wrap of the tow. A coating can then be uniformly applied to the reinforcing fibers without defects caused by fiber tow to fiber tow contact. The separation layer can be a carbon fiber veil.
Claims7
An article, comprising a tow of reinforcing fibers and a separation layer with longitudinal axis in parallel alignment with a longitudinal axis of said tow, said tow and said separation layer wound or wrapped together onto a support structure in an interleaved manner with said separation layer separating a wrap of said tow from an adjacent wrap of said tow, and wherein said separation layer comprises a greater than 80% porosity, non-woven veil of fibers chopped to between 3 mm and 25 mm in length, and further wherein said tow and separation layers are helically wound onto said frustum-shaped mandrel.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.