LONG SHORT-FIBER REINFORCED THERMOPLASTICS

A new family of fiber-reinforced thermoplastic compounds is produced by a pultrusion process rather than conventional extruder compounding. This allows a high level of fiber impregnation without fiber damage, which in turn allows much longer fiber lengths in melt-processible pellets, at much higher weight fractions than are possible with short-fiber products. In combination with a proprietary coupling system, these pultruded pellets enable fabricators to achieve typically 10-20 times the average fiber length in finished components. These long-short fiber compounds exhibit substantial property improvements over conventional short-fiber systems, but do not require special processing; normal processing equipment and molds, and conditions similar to those used in short-fiber compound processing can generally be used.