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Electrical conductivity and self-heating improvement of carbon fiber composite using functionalized graphene nanoplatelets

  • Belal Alemour ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Mohd Roshdi Hassan , Omar Badran and Hong Ngee Lim
Published/Copyright: August 25, 2025
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Abstract

The electrical conductivity of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite (CFRE) is poor and need more improvement to be used in more applications such as deicing processes. Functionalized Graphene Nanoplatelets (FGNP) are used in present study to improve and enhance the electrical conductivity of CFRE by coating on its top surface. The results show that the electrical conductivity of CFRE is increased significantly by 11 times with percentage of improvement of 1,110 %. The effect of Joule heating in CFRE/FGNP specimen is also studied. The results show that the self-heating of CFRE is improved after coating it with FGNP. The self-heating of CFRE/FGNP specimen becomes more efficient and homogeneous, reaching high levels of temperature, more than CFRE neat at the same applied voltage. Tensile test is also performed by applying axial tensile load on the CFRE/FGNP specimen to investigate the effect of tensile load on its electrical conductivity. Therefore, it is found that the electrical resistivity of CFRE/FGNP is increased by increasing the applied tensile load.


Corresponding author: Belal Alemour, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bahrain Polytechnic University, Isa Town, Bahrain, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editors S.M. Sapuan, Mohd Roshdi Hassan, Eris Elianddy Supeni, and Azizan As’arry for their guidance and review of this article before its publication.

  1. Research ethics: Not applicable.

  2. Informed consent: Not applicable.

  3. Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  4. Use of Large Language Models, AI and Machine Learning Tools: None declared.

  5. Conflict of interest: The authors state no conflict of interest.

  6. Research funding: None declared.

  7. Data availability: Not applicable.

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Received: 2024-10-01
Accepted: 2025-03-12
Published Online: 2025-08-25

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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