2000-05-10
10:00 at ML H 41.1

Processing property interactions in short fibre composites

Peter Hine

IRC in Polymer Science and Technology, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

While injection moulded short fibre composites offer the designer a range of possibilities by virtue of the combination of fast cycle times, low cost and good mechanical properties, they also offer a considerable challenge for it is often very difficult to predict what the mechanical properties will be, leading, very often to over design. The main problem is that the mechanical properties are very dependent on the fibre architecture (specifically the fibre aspect ratio) and the fibre orientation, and these are very dependent on the processing route used. Key to understanding these issues is to establish the link between the processing route and the resulting fibre orientation distribution, coupled with the link between fibre orientation and the mechanical properties.

In this talk a number of case studies will be described where these links have been explored. A number of different injection moulded components, of varying geometrical complexity, have been studied, and a clear link has been established between the fibre orientation structures in these components (measured using an in-house developed image analyser), and the resulting mechanical properties (measured using an in-house developed ultrasonic technique). Recent work, using commercial mould simulation software, has explored the current state of fibre orientation prediction.