Weak link scaling analysis of high-strength carbon fibre

The strengths of polyacrylonitrile-based carbon fibres were obtained for lengths ranging from 1 to 500 mm. These were analysed according to the two-parameter Weibull distribution and the accuracy of using weak-link scaling was assessed. Extrapolation using weak link scaling over the orders of magnitude required for models of composite strength was found to give large errors, highlighting the inadequacies of the two parameter Weibull expression for modelling purposes.