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Article M AT E R I A L S
Journal of Composite Materials
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mechanical properties of carbon DOI: 10.1177/0021998315602049
jcm.sagepub.com
fiber-reinforced plastic unidirectional
laminates by X-ray computed tomography
and mechanical testing

AG Stamopoulos1, KI Tserpes1, P Prucha2 and D Vavrik3

Abstract
The effects of porosity on the matrix-dominated mechanical properties of unidirectional carbon fiber-reinforced plastic
composites were evaluated using X-ray computed tomography and mechanical testing. Carbon fiber-reinforced plastic
plates of four porosity levels were manufactured by implementing different curing cycles. Porosity was detected by X-ray
computed tomography tests, conducted on samples taken from the plates, and quantified by analyzing the computed
tomography scans using the VGStudio Max software. Four different types of mechanical tests were conducted; namely,
transverse tension, V-notched rail shear, three-point bending, and short-beam shear tests. The porosity analysis showed
that with increasing the porosity volume fraction, the number of pores decreases, their volume increases while their
shape changes from spherical or ellipsoidal to a needle-shape. The results from mechanical tests reveal that the presence
of pores reduces all matrix-dominated material properties of the UniDirectional (UD) carbon fiber-reinforced plastic
material. The reduction in strength is greater than the reduction in the elastic properties. Moreover, the reduction in the
in-plane shear and interlaminar properties is greater than the tensile properties of the UD carbon fiber-reinforced plastic
material. Between porosity contents of similar volume fraction, the one with the few large pores proved more severe
than the one with the many small pores. The large standard deviation observed for some of the tests is attributed to the
non-uniform dispersion of pores.

Keywords
Carbon fiber-reinforced plastics laminates, porosity, X-ray computed tomography, mechanical testing

Introduction recent manufacturing techniques, the porosity volume

Nowadays, carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRPs)
have become a primary material for aeronautic struc-
tures as they comprise 50% of the Boeing 787
Dreamliner and 52% of the new Airbus A350. Since
the development of composite materials, a variety of
manufacturing processes have been proposed aiming
to reduce cost and improve quality of the material.
Despite the significant progress made, the development
of defects in the composite material during the manu-
facturing process still remains a critical problem.
The most common defect in composite materials is
porosity, the presence of voids in the matrix. The main
cause for the formation of porosity is the insufficient
curing cycles applied in the autoclave.1–9 With the
fraction has been reduced to levels below 5%. However,
the specific porosity level in combination with other
parameters, such as the vicinity of the pores with
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics, Laboratory of
Technology and Strength of Materials, University of Patras, Patras, Greece
2
LA composite, Beranovych, Prague 9, Czech Republic
3
Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, Czech Technical
University in Prague, Horska, Prague, Czech Republic
Corresponding author:
KI Tserpes, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics,
Laboratory of Technology and Strength of Materials, University of Patras,
Patras 26500, Greece.
Email: kit2005@mech.upatras.gr

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2 Journal of Composite Materials 0(0)
critical loaded areas, may not be acceptable as it may
lead to the significant reduction in the mechanical prop-
erties of the CFRP materials.10–16 It is therefore import-
ant to be able to detect porosity in CFRP components
before putting them into service.
The detection of defects in composite materials is
done by non-destructive testing. The most commonly
used non-destructive testing method is ultrasonic
inspection due to the simplicity of the involved process
and equipment.17–19 Thermography has been also
applied mainly for the detection of inclusions.20
In recent years, X-ray computed tomography (CT) is
gaining much attention due to its high accuracy and
the ability for a three-dimensional (3D) representation
of the voids. Only a few works have been reported on
the use of X-ray CT for characterization of porosity in
CFRPs.21–27 Little et al.21 used different Non
Destructive Techniques (NDT) to detect voids in uni-
directional composites. The authors concluded that
considering the required preparation and testing pro-
cesses, the characterization information available, cost
and overall accuracy and reliability, the micro-CT ana-
lysis is the most accurate and reliable technique for char-
acterizing voids. Nikishkov et al.22 proposed a new
method for quantifying porosity/void dimensions in
composites detected by X-ray CT and discussed meth-
ods to minimize errors in void detection. The method-
ology was validated on a composite specimen with
drilled micro-holes; and applied to a unidirectional
carbon/epoxy tape composite and carbon/epoxy fabric
specimens with porosity defects. Scott et al.23 applied a
multi-scale CT technique to determine the material
structure and damage mechanisms in hydrostatically
loaded composite circumferential structures. The result-
ant images allow direct 3D analysis of voids, fibre
breaks and cracking, for which a high level of confidence
can be placed in the results when compared to other
indirect and/or surface-based methods. Weck et al.24
implemented in situ X-ray CT in mechanical tests in
order to observe the damage inside in metal matrix com-
posites. Kastner et al.25 performed a study on the quan-
titative determination of porosity with a reasonable
degree of accuracy. In order to attain this, they applied
different segmentation methods, performed systematic
computed tomography investigations on a broad variety
of composite samples with different measurement par-
ameters and compared the results obtained by standard
porosity measurement methods, such as ultrasonic test-
ing and acid digestion. As revealed from the above short
literature overview, the existing works on the use of X-
ray CT for characterization of porosity in composite
materials have focused on the demonstration of meth-
od’s usability and efficiency as well as on the role of
measurement parameters. To the authors’ knowledge,
there is no reported work in which the results from X-
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ray CT have been correlated with result from mechan-
ical tests.
In this work, the detailed characteristics of porosity
obtained by X-ray CT have been correlated with
results from mechanical tests in order to understand
the effects of the presence of porosity on the mechanical
properties of UD CFRP laminates. The paper is orga-
nized as follows. The next section describes materials,
manufacturing methods, X-ray CT tests, and mechan-
ical tests. This is followed by a section that presents the
results from the analysis of CT scans and explains the
findings of mechanical tests in terms of porosity
characteristics.
Experimental
Materials and manufacturing
The specimens were made from prepreg unidirectional
composite laminates with 16 and 32 plies. For the
reinforcement, the unidirectional (Hight Tenacity A
fibers) HTA 24 k carbon fibers were used with a filament
diameter of 7 mm. As for the matrix, the EHkF 420
epoxy resin was used. This is an epoxy system designed
for a large variety of manufacturing processes. It can be
cured in a temperature ranging from 120 C/45 min to
160 C/10 min. The pre-impregnated EHkF 420-HTA
24 k UD is very suitable for manufacturing aircraft com-
ponents and may easily be exposed to a range of tem-
perature between 55 C and þ80 C while being in-
service. The weight fraction of the resin is 35%.
Manufacturing of CFRP plates with different poros-
ity content was achieved by implementing different
curing cycles in the autoclave. While the temperature
and the dwell in the corresponding temperature were
kept the same for every plate, a different pressure was
applied inside the autoclave. The four curing cycles
applied to obtain the different porosity levels are
described in Figure 1. The four different porosity
levels are labeled as Reference, Minimum, Medium
and Extensive. In the Reference material, the aim was
to minimize the porosity content to the lowest possible,
while in the Extensive porosity the curing cycle had a
large deviation from the normal curing parameters
aiming to significantly increase porosity content.
X-ray CT
Porosity in the CFRP material was detected using
X-ray CT. To this end, small samples were cut from
each of the plate of the four porosity levels and
scanned. The dimensions of the samples are
13.45 mm  9.46 mm  2.75 mm. The equipment used
for the scanning procedure is the XWT 240 SE X-ray
work tube and the Perkin Elmer XRD 1622 flat panel
Stamopoulos et al. 3

140 1.2

120 1
Temperature
100

Temperature (°C)
0.8

Pressure (MPa)
Reference
80
0.6 Minimum Porosity
60
Medium Porosity
0.4
40 Extensive Porosity

20 0.2

0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
Time (minutes)

Figure 1. The curing cycles applied for the different porosity levels.

Figure 2. (a) Apparatus of the X-ray CT equipment with the flat-panel detectors and the specimen on the rotation table and
(b) Close-view of the CFRP sample mounted on the rotation table.

detector. Figure 2 illustrates a photo of the equipment

and a mounted sample. The acquisition parameters
Mechanical testing
used are: Four different types of mechanical tests were conducted
to investigate the effect of porosity on the mechanical
. 800 projections, X-ray tube at 70 kV and 300 mA, properties of the CFRP material, namely the transverse
. focus to detector distance of 1335 mm, tension, the V-notched rail shear, the three-point bend-
. focus to object distance of 73 mm, ing, and the short-beam shear test. These tests were
. acquisition time of 1 sec, and specifically selected as they lead to the measurement
. voxel size of 11 mm. of matrix-dominated properties which are expected to
be influenced by the presence of porosity. The speci-
mens tested for each porosity level were cut from the
In order to avoid the beam hardening effect on the same plates with the samples tested by X-ray CT. All
CT scan, the signal-to-equivalent thickness method28 tests have been conducted using an MTS universal test
was implemented. The images were acquired and recon- machine with a load capacity of 100 kN.
structed using of Volex 6 software provided by the
Fraunhofer Development Centre X-ray Technology Transverse tension test. The transverse tension test aims at
EZRT (Furth, Germany). the measurement of transverse modulus and transverse

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4 Journal of Composite Materials 0(0)
Figure 3. A typical grey values histogram.
Figure 4. Porosity analysis images obtained using (a) the
threshold value derived from the Otsu method34,35 and (b) the
automatic threshold value of VG.
tensile strength of the UD CFRP material. The test was
conducted according to the ASTM D3039M stan-
dard.29 The lay-up of the specimens was (90 )16 and
their dimensions were 175 mm  25 mm  2.5 mm. The
gage length was 125 mm. Five specimens were tested for
each porosity level under a loading rate of 1 mm/min. .
Figure 3 shows a representative load-displacement
curve of a transverse tension test. The transverse modu-
lus was derived from the slope of the initial part of the
curve, while the transverse tensile strength was taken
equal to the ratio of the maximum recorded load to the
specimen’s cross-sectional area. In the transverse ten-
sion tests, two different failure modes were observed,
namely a lateral crack at the middle of the gage length
(Figure 4a) and a lateral crack close to the tabs
(Figure 4b). As both failure modes are acceptable
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according to the standard, all tests were considered as
valuable.
V-notched rail shear test. The V-notched rail shear test
aims at the measurement of the in-plane shear proper-
ties of the UD CFRP material. It is a combination of
the Iosipescu and the rail shear tests. The test was con-
ducted according to the ASTM D7078 standard.30
After calibrating the specimens to ensure that no bend-
ing appears, strain gages were attached at the 45 and
45 directions at the center of the surface of each
specimen. The material lay-up was (0 )16. Figure 5
shows a representative load-displacement curve rec-
orded from a V-notched rail shear test. The in-plane
shear modulus of the composite material was derived
from the linear part of the curve as


G12 ¼ ð1Þ


where
 is the variation of shear stress and
 is the
variation of shear strain taken as
 ¼ j"1 j þ j"2 j where
"1 and "2 are the normal strains measured by the strain
gauges. The V-notched rail shear specimens failed due
to two cracks developed at the notch tip and propa-
gated perpendicular to the load as shown in Figure 6.
Three-point bending test. The three-point bending test
aims at the measurement of flexural strength and
modulus of the UD CFRP material. The test was con-
ducted according to the ISO 14125 standard.31 The lay-
up of the specimens was (0 )16 and their dimensions
were 100 mm 15 mm 2 mm. Five specimens were
tested for each porosity level under the loading rate
of 6 mm/min. Figure 7 shows a representative load-dis-
placement curve recorded from a three-point bending
test. All specimens failed at the mid-span due to cracks
Stamopoulos et al. 5

Figure 5. Defect volume distribution diagrams for (a) Reference sample, (b) Minimum porosity sample, (c) Medium porosity sample,
and (d) Extensive porosity sample. In the diagrams, pores with a volume up to 0.0003 mm3 have been included to enable a more direct
comparison between the different porosity levels.

90o
90o

2 mm 2 mm

(a) 0o (b) 0o

90o
90o
2 mm 2 mm

(c) 0o (d) 0o

Grey tone Grey value Entity

44904 Material
9544 Pore

Figure 6. Opaque 3D transparent view of (a) Reference sample, (b) Minimum porosity sample, (c) Medium porosity sample, and
(d) Extensive porosity sample taken from VGStudio MAX software.28 In the figures, some of the pores are indicated with red arrows.

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6 Journal of Composite Materials 0(0)

Figure 7. Variation of pores characteristics with regard to the applied cycle pressure: (a) pores volume fraction, (b) average pore
size, and (c) pores average gap.

flexural modulus, the deflections s0 and s00 , which cor-

respond to the values of strain "0f ¼ 0:0005 and
"0f ¼ 0:0025, respectively, were calculated by

"0f L2 "00f L2
s0 ¼ and s00 ¼ ð3Þ
6h 6h

respectively. Then, the flexural modulus is calculated

from

Figure 8. The average transverse tension load–displacement
curves for the four different applied pressures.
developed both at compression and tension parts of the
specimen (Figure 8). The flexural strength of the speci-
mens was derived from
3Pmax L
 fsu ¼
2bh2
where Pmax is the maximum recorded load and L, b,
and h are the length, the width, and the thickness of the
specimen, respectively. For the derivation of the
 00f   0f  00f   0f
Ef ¼ ¼ ¼ 500ð 00f   0f Þ ð4Þ
"00f  "0f 0:0025  0:0005
where f0 and f00 are the equivalent stresses at the strains
of 0.0005 and 0.0025, respectively, derived from equa-
tion (1) using the respective load values.
Short-beam shear test (ILSS). The short-beam shear test
aims at the measurement of interlaminar shear strength
(ILSS) of the UD CFRP material. The difference
between the ILSS and the three-point bending test is
ð2Þ
that the ILSS test uses specimens thick enough to allow
high interlaminar stresses to develop and dominate fail-
ure. The test was conducted according to the ASTM
D2344M standard.32 The lay-up of the specimens was
(0 )32 and their dimensions 24 mm 8 mm 4 mm. Five

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Stamopoulos et al. 7

Figure 9. Failure modes of the transverse tension test: (a) lateral crack at the middle of the gage length and (b) lateral crack close to
the tabs.

(a) 10 (b) 50
Transverse stiffness [GPa]

Transverse strength [MPa]

8 40

6 30

4 20

2 10

0 0

Figure 10. The average experimental values of (a) transverse stiffness and (b) transverse tensile strength for the specimens of the
different porosity level.

specimens were tested for each porosity level under the
loading rate of 1 mm/min. Fig.9 shows a representative
load-displacement curve recorded from an ILSS test.
All specimens failed due to multiple through-the-
width interlaminar cracks developed at one side of the
specimen (Fig.10). The short-beam strength was
derived from
Pmax
Fsbs ¼ 0:75 
bh
where Pmax is the maximum load, b is the specimen’s
width, and h is the specimen’s length.
Results and discussion
Porosity analysis and quantification
The reconstructed images taken from CT were analyzed
using the VGStudio MAX software.33 Initially, the
effects of probability threshold, the threshold value on
grey values histogram, and the lowest detectable size on
the analyzed porosity characteristics were examined.
The probability threshold represents the certainty of a
pore to be indeed a pore and not an artifact. The higher
the probability value the more certain it is for a
detected pore to be a void and vice versa. In this ana-
lysis, the default software’s value of 1 was used for the
probability threshold as parametric analyses conducted
with smaller values treated artifacts as pores. The
threshold value on the grey values histogram represents
the threshold in which the material is distinctively sepa-
rated from the background air. A typical grey value
ð5Þ
histogram is shown in Figure 3. In Figure 4, the pores
detected by the software (areas bounded with yellow)
using the threshold grey value derived by the Otsu
method,34,35 and the automatic software’s value, derived
after surface determination with example area, are com-
pared. As can be seen, the analysis with the Otsu value
underestimated porosity as it failed to detect some very
small pores. Consequently, in this work the automatic
software’s threshold grey value was adopted. Regarding
the lowest detectable size, the default value of eight
voxels was used since the analyses conducted with the
size of four voxels led to an overestimation of porosity
due to the treatment of artifacts as pores.
The porosity volume fractions estimated by the soft-
ware for the Reference, Minimum, Medium, and

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8 Journal of Composite Materials 0(0)
Extensive porosity levels are 0.82%, 1.56%, 1.62%, and
3.43%, respectively. The values reveal that even the
Reference sample contains a considerable amount of
pores. In this case, the porosity content comprises
small pores of spherical and ellipsoidal shape and
three to four larger elongated pores. The defect
volume distribution for the Reference porosity level is
shown in Figure 5(a). In the Minimum porosity sample,
although the number of pores decreases compared to
the Reference sample, the porosity volume fraction
increases due to the increase in the volume of the
pores as revealed from the defect volume distribution
diagram of Figure 5(b). For the Medium porosity level,
a similar porosity volume fraction with the Minimum
level was evaluated. Again the number of pores was
decreased but their size was increased. The defect
volume distribution for the Medium porosity level is
shown in Figure 5(c). Finally, in the Extensive porosity
sample the porosity volume fraction was significantly
increased due to the existence of a few elongated pores
with very large volume as shown in Figure 5(d).
Figure 6 shows the transparent views of the four sam-
ples. The pores correspond to the light grey areas (see
scale). The different grey tones in these areas are due to
the different position of the pores in the material
volume. In Figure 6(d), the pores seem to occupy a
much greater volume than the actual one (3.43%); how-
ever, this is a delusion attributed to the combination of
the pores’ geometry (large cross-sectional area and very
small thickness) and the angle of view. In the photos of
Figure 6, the porosity characteristics of each porosity
level described above are visible and the conclusions
drawn about the number and size of pores from the
defect volume distribution diagrams are confirmed.
From the above discussion on the results of porosity
analysis, it may be concluded that moving from lower
to higher porosity level the number of pores decreases,
their volume increases, and their shape changes from
spherical or ellipsoidal to a needle shape. Aiming to go
deeper in the voids characterization, the pores volume
fraction, average pore size, and average gap between
pores are plotted against the applied cycle pressure in
Figure 7. Until 0.6 MPa, there is an almost linear
increase in pores volume fraction and average gap
and no change in pore size. Below 0.6 MPa, there is a
significant increase in all the three characteristics. The
average gap between pores varies reversely with the
number of pores.
Results from mechanical tests – correlation with
porosity characteristics
In this section, the results from mechanical tests will be
presented and the deviation of mechanical properties
between the different porosity levels will be explained
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in terms of porosity analysis results based on the
assumption that the porosity characteristics of the sam-
ples scanned by the CT also apply to the specimens
tested.
Transverse tension. Figure 8 compares the average trans-
verse tension load–displacement curves for the four dif-
ferent applied pressures. In these tests, two different
failure modes were observed, namely a lateral crack
at the middle of the gage length (Figure 9(a)) and a
lateral crack close to the tabs (Figure 9(b)). As both
failure modes are acceptable by the standard, all tests
were considered as valuable.
The average experimental values of transverse stiff-
ness and transverse tensile strength are presented for
the specimens of the different porosity level in
Figure 10(a) and 10(b), respectively. The results show
a small reduction in transverse stiffness, which increases
with increasing porosity volume fraction going up to
1.28% for the Extensive porosity level. On the contrary,
there is a considerable reduction in transverse tensile
strength of the UD material, which goes up to 14.7%
for the Extensive porosity level. For the Minimum and
Medium porosity levels, a similar transverse tensile
strength was measured due to the similar porosity con-
tent. The fact that the reduction in transverse tensile
strength of the CFRP UD material is not linearly
related to the porosity content is indicative of the effects
of pores’ shape, volume, and location. Specifically, the
presence of the few large elongated pores (Figure 6(d))
seems to have a more severe effect than the many pores
of smaller volume (Figure 6(b) and (c). The different
effect of porosity in the stiffness and strength is related
to the role of pores at different load-levels: at low load-
levels the effect of pores with a small content is minor as
the load is transferred by the intact material, while at
high load-levels the pores interact with the damage
mechanisms (e.g. matrix cracking and delamination)
leading to early failure of the specimen. A reason for
the reduction of standard deviation with increasing the
porosity level could be the increase in the uniformity of
large pores’ dispersion with increasing their population.
V-notch rail shear. Figure 11 compares the average
V-notch rail shear load–displacement curves for the
four different applied pressures. The V-notched rail
shear specimens failed due to two cracks developed at
the notch tip and propagated perpendicular to the load
as shown in Figure 12.
The average experimental in-plane shear modulus
and strength of the specimens with different porosity
level are presented in Figure 13(a) and (b), respectively.
A significant reduction in both properties, which
increases with increasing the porosity content, is
observed. The percentage of reduction in the shear
Stamopoulos et al. 9

modulus and shear strength goes up for the Extensive
porosity level to 20.8% and 14.72%, respectively. This
reduction is greater than the reduction in transverse
stiffness and tensile strength revealing a more severe
effect of pores on the shear load-carrying capability
than the tensile load-carrying capability of the material.
The large standard deviation in the in-plane shear
modulus of the first three porosity levels is an indica-
tion of the different dispersion of large pores in the
samples with regard to the critically loaded areas of
the specimen.

Three-point bending. Figure 14 compares the three-point

bending load–displacement curves for the four different

Figure 11. The average V-notch rail shear load–displacement

curves for the four different applied pressures.

Figure 14. The average three-point bending load–displacement

curves for the four different applied pressures.

Figure 12. Specimen cracking during a V-notched rail shear Figure 15. A cracked specimen after a three-point bending
test. test.

(a) 6 (b) 100

Shear modulus G12 [GPa]

5
Shear strength [MPa]

80
4
60
3
40
2
20
1

0 0

Figure 13. The average experimental values of (a) in-plane shear modulus and (b) in-plane shear strength for the specimens of the
different porosity level.

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10 Journal of Composite Materials 0(0)

(a) 140 (b) 1600

120

Flexural strength [MPa]

Flexural modulus [GPa]
1400
100 1200
80 1000
800
60
600
40
400
20 200
0 0

Figure 16. The average experimental values of (a) flexural modulus and (b) flexural strength for the specimens of the different
porosity level.

Average short beam strength [MPa]

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

Figure 17. The average ILSS load–displacement curves for the

four different applied pressures.
Figure 19. The average experimental values of the short-beam
strength for the specimens of the different porosity level.

the CFRP UD laminate, as it is expected many of the

pores to have been placed at the interface between the
layers. The smaller average values of the properties at
the Medium porosity compared to the Minimum por-
osity samples, despite their similar porosity content, are
due to the different volume of the pores between the
two levels.

Figure 18. A fractured specimen after a short-beam shear test.
applied pressures. All specimens failed at the mid-span
due to cracks developed both at compression and ten-
sion parts of the specimen (Figure 15).
The average experimental values of flexural modulus
and flexural strength of the specimens with different
porosity level are presented in Figure 16(a) and (b),
respectively. As can be seen, there is a decrease in
both the flexural modulus and flexural strength which
goes up for the Extensive porosity level to 10.59% and
17.38%, respectively. This finding reveals the severe
effect of pores on the interlaminar shear properties of
Short-beam shear (ILSS). Figure 17 compares the ILSS
load–displacement curves for the four different applied
pressures. All specimens failed at the mid-span due to
cracks developed both at the compression and tension
parts of the specimen (Figure 18).
The average experimental short-beam strength
values of the specimens with the different porosity
level are presented in Figure 19. The results show a
considerable reduction in the short-beam strength,
which increases with increasing the porosity volume
fraction up to 11.11% for the Extensive porosity
level. This finding verifies the conclusions drawn previ-
ously from the three-point bending test about the nega-
tive effect of pores on the interlaminar shear properties

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Stamopoulos et al. 11

Table 1. Deviation of mechanical properties of the Minimum, Medium, and Extensive porosity samples with regard to Reference
sample.

Deviation from the reference sample

Porosity Transverse In-plane In-plane

Porosity volume Transverse tensile shear shear Flexural Flexural Short-beam
level fraction (%) stiffness (%) strength (%) modulus (%) strength (%) strength (%) stiffness (%) shear strength

Minimum 1.56 0.23 3.8 16.7 3.2 5 1.6 5.54

Medium 1.62 0.46 4.3 17.8 4.3 12.6 3.3 9.62
Extensive 3.43 0.93 13.7 20.8 13.1 16.6 4.1 13.6

of the CFRP UD material. In this case, the results are
even more representative since the interlaminar shear
stresses developed at the short-beam specimen are
much greater than those developed at the three-point
bending specimen.
The deviation of mechanical properties of
the Minimum, Medium and Extensive porosity
samples with regard to the Reference sample is listed
in Table 1.
Conclusions
In this paper, the effects of porosity on the matrix-
dominated mechanical properties of UD CFRP lamin-
ates were evaluated using X-ray CT and mechanical
testing. CFRP plates of four porosity volume fractions;
namely 0.82%, 1.56%, 1.62%, and 3.4% were manu-
factured by implementing different curing cycles. The
porosity was detected by X-ray CT tests conducted on
samples taken from the plates and quantified using the
VGStudio Max software. Four different types of mech-
anical tests were conducted, namely, transverse tension,
V-notched rail shear, three-point bending, and short-
beam shear tests. From this study, the following con-
clusions can be drawn:
. Until 0.6 MPa of cycle pressure (60% of the refer-
ence pressure), there is an almost linear increase in
pores volume fraction and average gap and no
change in the pore size. Below 0.6 MPa, there is a
significant increase in all three characteristics.
. The detailed porosity analysis showed that with
increasing the porosity content the number of
pores decreases, their volume increases, and their
shape changes from spherical or ellipsoidal to a
needle shape.
. The presence of pores reduces all matrix-dominated
material properties of UD CFRP material. The
reduction in strength is greater than the reduction
in the elastic properties as at high low load-levels
the pores interact with damage mechanisms acceler-
ating the fracture process.
. The reduction in the in-plane shear and interlaminar
properties is greater than the tensile properties of the
UD CFRP material. This finding reveals that the
pores affect more the shear load-carrying capability
than the tensile load carrying capability of the
material.
. Between porosity contents of similar volume frac-
tion, the one with the few large pores is more
severe than the one with the many small pores.
. The large standard deviation observed in some of the
test series is attributed to the different dispersion,
size, and shape of the pores.
Funding
The work described in the paper has received funding from
the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for
Research, Technological Development, and Demonstration
(FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement no.314562:
QUICOM project (Quantitative Inspection of Complex
Composite Aeronautic Parts Using Advanced X-ray
Techniques).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
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