Investigation on the Fiber Orientation Distributions and Their Influence on the Mechanical Property of the Co-Injection Molding Products

作者：Chao‐Tsai Huang, Xuanwei Chen, Weiwen Fu · 发表于：Polymers · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.3390/polym12010024 · 被引用次数：39 · 研究领域：Composite Material Mechanics、Mechanical Behavior of Composites、Epoxy Resin Curing Processes

In recent years, due to the rapid development of industrial lightweight technology, composite materials based on fiber reinforced plastics (FRP) have been widely used in the industry. However, the environmental impact of the FRPs is higher each year. To overcome this impact, co-injection molding could be one of the good solutions. But how to make the suitable control on the skin/core ratio and how to manage the glass fiber orientation features are still significant challenges. In this study, we have applied both computer-aided engineering (CAE) simulation and experimental methods to investigate the fiber feature in a co-injection system. Specifically, the fiber orientation distributions and their influence on the tensile properties for the single-shot and co-injection molding have been discovered. Results show that based on the 60:40 of skin/core ratio and same materials, the tensile properties of the co-injection system, including tensile stress and modulus, are a little weaker than that of the single-shot system. This is due to the overall fiber orientation tensor at flow direction (A11) of the co-injection system being lower than that of the single-shot system. Moreover, to discover and verify the influence of the fiber orientation features, the fiber orientation distributions (FOD) of both the co-injection and single-shot systems have been observed using micro-computerized tomography (μ-CT) technology to scan the internal structures. The scanned images were further utiliz...