Investigations of the carbon fibre cross-sectional areas and their non-circularities by means of laser diffraction

Laser diffraction is a commonly used tool to measure the fibre diameter of carbon fibres prior to mechanical testing. However, non-circularities of carbon fibres need to be considered in order to minimise measuring errors. As the work at hand demonstrates, using a single measurement of the fibre diameter may cause deviations as high as 30% from a computationally determined value. It appears that the error can be minimised by acquiring a data set of several apparent diameters as a function of the angle around the fibre axis. Based on this data, the cross-sectional area can be calculated as a circle with an averaged diameter or as an ellipse by applying an elliptical fitting procedure.