A Review on Woven Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Epoxy Composites: Processing Methods and Mechanical Enhancement

Recently, epoxy resin-based composite structures have been widely used in many engineering applications due to their superior mechanical properties, thermal insulation and acoustic damping. However, to further improve the mechanical performance, several studies indicate significant benefits can be achieved using woven carbon fibers and different core material reinforcements for sandwich composite materials. The present review includes a comprehensive review of the most important composite material manufacturing techniques such as hand layup, spray layup, compression moulding, extrusion compound, filament winding, moulding injection, pultrusion, resin transfer moulding, and vacuum infusion or vacuum-assisted resin transfer, and the advantages of each method. In addition to the mechanical performance of epoxy composites and the possibility of improving these properties by using different strategies to enhance interfacial bonding and mechanical performance. These strategies include the incorporation of nanoparticles, surface modifications, the use of advanced resin systems, and a review of the latest studies in this field. Each approach aims to interaction improvement between carbon fibers and the epoxy matrix, thus enhancing properties such as tensile strength, compression strength, impact resistance, and interlaminar shear strength. To establish a systematic understanding of design criteria, this work intends to summarize all studies in the open literature about this topic. It is concluded that enhancing the mechanical performance of sandwich structural composites depends on the selection of the appropriate manufacturing method, which is determined by material properties, cost considerations, processing requirements, and specific applications.