Carbon is used quite often for cosmetic reasons. It exudes high tech. In that case it needs to be exposed and that is best done using a female mould to get the required finish with the carbon exposed.
The engineering reason to use carbon is primarily stiffness. However carbon does not have the strain energy of fiberglass so unless stiffness is required you get a lot more value just using glass. In lightweight hulls with sandwich core I do not see much value in carbon from an engineering sense. I also take the view that a little extra resin protects the fibre and core. Sure it would be better from a strength to weight perspective to use more fibre than resin but the extra resin is not useless. One of the easiest ways to save weight is to use lower gsm on the inside surfaces that are only exposed to tension under hull loads.
The linked paper gives some details on ballistic impact of layups ranging from all glass to all carbon layups:
There is not much difference in the ballistic strength.
If you are dead set on the highest possible strength to weight then pre-impregnated materials are best but you will need a full mould and oven.
On 4 Jun 2018, at 6:42 pm, '.' eruttan@yahoo.com [harryproa] <harryproa@yahoogroups.com.au> wrote:It is my understanding that wet layup is unable to get low resin ratios needed to exploit carbon.
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Posted by: Rick Willoughby <rickwill@bigpond.net.au>
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