Hello,
I would like to know what are the pros and cons for the truss made of carbon fiber tubes as beams and aluminium elements as joints (you can see an example of such one in attachment).
I have heard that when carbon fiber composite is joined to aluminium surface it has tendency to rub itself so it results in damage of that carbon composite.
please tell me your opinions. Maybe there is valuable source of knowledge about it?
Thank you,
What is the application?
CF and aluminium will suffer galvanic corrosion
CF and aluminium have hugely different co-efficient of thermal expansions
Hello,
Thank you for response!
That would be space frame for solar car. So temperatures can be up to 50-60C (122F-140F) or even higher when aluminium joint is exposed directly to the sun.
Do you consider different elongation(when load is applied) of these materials as a cause of possible failure?(I know that woven prepreg laminate made of T300 carbon fiber has the similar modulus of elasticity -E as the silumin. It is 65 GPa compared to 70-80 GPa). Therefore I think it is not the problem.
When these elements would be bonded with adhesive, do you still predict galvanic corrosion?
That should be pretty straight forward… you can bond them together with adhesive. You need to follow propper surface prep for bonding. Galvanic corosion shouldn’t be a problem if the tubes are bonded properly and not used in a wet environment. You can also coat the tubes with an outer glass veil to shield from this.
I’ve also seen some connectors from dragonplate… haven’t used em but could be in your direction: http://dragonplate.com/ecart/categories.asp?cID=187
You could also make connectors from carbon.