Getting ready to glass the leading edge of the fairing. I am curious if anyone has added carbon fiber to stiffen the fairing. I did this for the targa strip on my RV6 canopy because I felt it was too flimsy and it significantly increased the strength. Please give me some feedback regarding whether you feel it’s unnecessary or your results if you did add carbon fiber to the layup. I was thinking of three ply’s of carbon sandwiched in the glass ply’s.
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Canopy fiberglass question
- Thread starter trib
- Start date
You building E-LSA or E-AB? You can't change the construction from the plans if E_LSA.
Couple notes here...
When used as a simple reinforcement, the primary physical difference between carbon and glass is tensile stiffness, not strength. As a loose general statement, most carbons are about 4x stiffer than glass, but only 1x to 1.5X stronger.
Further, the final stiffness of the assembly is highly dependent on the placement of the carbon in the layup. For high bending stiffness, we want to stack the carbon as far from the neutral axis as possible, i.e. not in the center of a symmetrical layup.
For example, consider a four ply glass core with a ply of carbon on each side, vs a two ply carbon core with two plies of glass on each side. The two layups would weight the same, and have roughly the same stiffness and strength in tension. However, the "carbon on the outside" layup would be a lot stiffer in bending.
Rv-12David
Active Member
I did the first layer in carbon for looks as it is directly against the canopy. Looks good with the canopy open. Fibreglass is plenty strong enough for the faring.
