Constructing a new tear-resistant skin for aramid fiber to enhance composites interfacial performance based on the interfacial shear stability

Abstract The enhancement of aramid fiber’s interfacial performance is vital to the overall composites properties. In this study, the composites interfacial shear stability is raised as a new factor that greatly affects the composites interfacial performance. Based on this, a new skin is constructed for aramid fiber on top of its old skin to improve its interfacial shear stability. Compared with the old skin, this new skin exhibits significant lower orientation along fiber axial direction. This endows fiber skin with highly improved tear resistance, so that the interfacial shear stability is greatly enhanced. Specially, the final composites interfacial properties show a strong correlation with the skin’s tear resistance, and the interfacial failure mode changes from the tearing of high-oriented old skin to neat fracture of this low-oriented new skin, confirming the remarkable effect of interfacial shear stability. Moreover, with further “extension strategies”, the final IFSS value could achieve 59.65 MPa, 75.3% higher than the original fiber.