A study on fiber orientation during the injection molding of fiber-reinforced polymeric composites (Comparison between image processing results and numerical simulation)

The characteristics of fiber-reinforced plastic composites depend on the quantity and shape of the fibers. During an injection molding process of composites, fiber orientation is produced by the flow state. The molded part tends to be anisotropic. It is very important to clarify the relationship between the orientation and the injection molding conditions. in this paper, the distribution of fiber orientation by the image processing method for the injection molded products of each fiber content is measured, and numerical analysis for orientation distribution is conducted, the orientation distribution by numerical simulation being compared with the results obtained from image processing. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.