Role of Constituents in Advanced Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites

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Advanced composites are made of the fiber and matrix materials. The boundary where fiber and matrix come in contact with each other and form a bond is called the interface. These three constituents contribute to the overall behavior of composites. In this article, we be discussing the role of each constituent in the manufacturing of advance polymer composites. Fiber Constituent The fibers are mainly responsible for the improved properties of advanced composites. Typical fiber materials used in the manufacturing of polymer composites are glass, carbon and aramid. These are all synthetic fibers and these days the natural fibers of various types are also getting attention in various applications. Pros and cons of using the fiber form of reinforcement constituent are listed below: Pros: Superior strength of the fiber form Generally, materials are available in their bulk form that refers to their existence in a relevantly large volumes. Such finish forms of these materials are already avail...
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Manufacturing processes for Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites (FRPCs)

There various ways in which fiber and matrix can be combined together to fabricate composite products. Here are the most commonly used manufacturing processes, along with brief summary listed in Table 1.

 Open mold

In this process, the composite product is made by hand layup of woven fiber mat or chopped strand mat wetted out with thermosetting resin in the mold. Sometimes, a spray of chopped fiber with resin to the mold for little or no bearing products with small production volume.

Bag molding

It is slow and labor intensive process that is not suitable for mass production. It is commonly used to manufacture complex, high quality structural parts in aerospace industry. It is slow and labor intensive process. Prepreg, made of continuous fiber preimpregnated with thermosetting plastic, is the starting material for this process. The use of autoclave ensures the quality of products.
 

Compression molding

It is used to produce products from short fiber reinforced thermosetting plastic. The sheet molding compound (SMC) or the bulk molding compound (BMC) are starting materials for this process.

Liquid composite molding

In this process either liquid thermosetting plastics is injected under pressure into in the mold or pulled into it by vacuum to wet out the dry preform already placed there. The former one is called structural reaction injection molding (SRIM) and the latter one is called resin transfer molding (RTM).
 

Filament winding

This continuous process involves the winding of fiber wetted out with thermosetting resin on a rotating mandrel. It is used for long and hollow parts i.e. pipe, pressure vessel etc.
 

Pultrusion

It is also continuous process ideally suited for manufacturing long prismatic cross-sectional structural members. The process requires the pulling of fibers wetted out with thermosetting resin through a die to achieve desire cross-sectional profile.

Forming

These are processes for manufacturing products from fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites. For example, therostamping, a one of the forming processes, involves the forming of a stack of thermoplastic based prepregs in the mold under heat and pressure.



About the Author: 
Dr. Khazar Hayat is a professional engineer with almost 15+ year of experience in research, design, analysis and development of products made of fiber reinforced plastics composites (FRPCs). Currently, he is working as an Associate Professor at Mechanical Engineering Department, The University of Lahore, Pakistan, can be reaching by emailing at khazarhayat@gmail.com.

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