Flat glass fibres : a study on flat glass fibres and their injection moulded polyamide 6,6 composites

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Carlin, Andrew Thomas and Yang, Liu and Thomason, James (2023) Flat glass fibres : a study on flat glass fibres and their injection moulded polyamide 6,6 composites. In: The 23rd International Conference on Composite Materials, 2023-07-31 - 2023-08-04, The ICC Belfast. (https://iccm-central.org/Proceedings/ICCM23proceed...)

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Abstract

The glass fibre reinforcement industry continues to enjoy continuous growth due to the challenges faced by the global climate crisis and the need for lightweighting across multiple sectors. However, as a well-established and mature industry, stepwise changes to glass fibres are required to maintain the level of innovation that has preceded present-day products. One such change is flat glass fibres. While already used on the industrial scale, flat glass fibres have had less impact on the academic literature. With patents and press releases stating flat glass fibres lead to improved mechanical properties, processability and bonding, more academic evidence is needed to explain why this might be. At the most fundamental level, an understanding of the properties of individual flat glass fibres is required. The properties of individual fibres dictate how they will reinforce and interact with various polymer systems. This paper discusses the initial results of such characterisation, with improvements in fibre tensile strength and modulus found for sized flat fibres versus circular fibres. Accurate characterisation of fibre cross-sectional area is found to have a significant effect on the values obtained for fibre tensile properties. The variation in fibre geometry and tensile strength leads to changes in the critical fibre length. Residual fibre length of glass-reinforced polyamide 6,6 was measured, with flat fibre composites exhibiting a longer fibre length. Coupled with a lower critical fibre length, this should translate to improved mechanical properties. Yet, only marginal differences are noted at high fibre weight fractions. When conditioned for 24 hours in boiling water, however, the properties of flat glass fibre composites are enhanced compared to their circular counterparts at high weight fractions. From the results presented, flat glass fibres improve various properties of short-fibre reinforced thermoplastics; however, further investigation is required to understand why and realise these benefits further.

ORCID iDs

Carlin, Andrew Thomas, Yang, Liu ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8475-1757 and Thomason, James ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0868-3793;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)