UROP Project

Analysis of fiber length degradation during advanced LFT compression molding

Thermoplastic fiber reinforced materials are increasingly used in the automotive industry to reduce weight and fuel consumption. The Institute of Plastics Processing (IKV) in Industry and the Skilled Crafts at RWTH Aachen University developed an advanced long fiber-reinforced thermoplastic (LFT) compression molding process by applying variothermal temperature control of the mold. The variothermal temperature control results in a reduction of required compression force, fiber length degradation and surface defects allowing the production of improved lightweight components in a middle and large scale production. The component properties are influenced significantly by the length of the reinforcing fibers in the component.The investigation of the resulting fiber length in dependence of different process parameter shall lead to an improvement of the component quality in order to increase the field of application possibilities.

Task

• Sampling and preparation of test specimens from compression molded LFT components • Determination of fiber length distribution by optical computer based evaluation methods • Analysis and documentation of results

Requirements

• Basic knowledge of composite processing • Knowledge of statistic data evaluation and image analysis