SIMULATION OF LONG SEMI-FLEXIBLE FIBER ORIENTATION DURING INJECTION MOLDING

Fiber orientation simulation is conducted for the Center Gated-Disk (CGD) geometry and compared with experimental data. Long-fiber thermoplastic composites (LFTs) possess competitive advantages over short glass fiber composites in terms of their mechanical properties while retain the ability to be injection molded. Mechanical properties of LFTs are highly dependent on the microstructural variables imparted by the injection molding process including fiber orientation and fiber length distribution. As the fiber length increased, the mechanical properties of the composites containing discontinuous fibers can approach those of continuous fiber materials. Several researchers have reported that flexural, creep and charpy impact properties increase as fiber length increases, while tensile modulus will plateau for glass fibers above 1 mm in length. Fibers less than the 1 mm threshold have been considered to be short while fibers with lengths greater than 1 mm are considered long. For long fibers, they will have the ability to deform, bend and even break during any stage of polymer processing. There is a lack of knowledge about the effects of fiber length and fiber length variation on fiber orientation kinetics. This lack of information provides an opportunity to understand the length effect inherent to long fibers systems. The Bead-Rod fiber orientation model takes into account the flexibility of semi flexible fibers that show small bending angles. In this model, a flexibility parameter representing the resistive bending potential is fiber length dependent(detailed explanation can be found in the reference)(1). This work is concerned with the effect of fiber length on the performance of the Bead-Rod fiber orientation model which takes into account the flexibility of semi-flexible fibers. Different averaging techniques are used to represent the average fiber length for the population of fibers, which give different fiber length parameters for the Bead-Rod model. The sensitivity of the Bead-Rod model is evaluated with regard to the fiber flexibility parameter, k, and length parameter, l(b). The other phenomenal parameters within the orientation model are obtained via basic rheological measurements using simple shear flow. As the value of average fiber length Lay increases and the corresponding flexibility parameter value decreases, the core regions become wider and the flow direction orientation gradually decreases especially near the walls for the Bead-Rod model predictions. In addition, as the parameters favor longer fiber lengths, the predicted extent of fiber bending increases. The simulation results are also compared with the experimental obtained fiber orientation at different flow length along the thickness direction. The Bead-Rod model shows improvement over the rigid rod model.