A new method to prepare more representative coated glass fibres for screening and development of sizings at the laboratory scale

Thomason, James and Akrami, Roya and Yang, Liu (2024) A new method to prepare more representative coated glass fibres for screening and development of sizings at the laboratory scale. In: 21st European Conference on Composite Materials, 2024-07-02 - 2024-07-05.

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Abstract

Conventional laboratory scale glass fibre sizing analysis commonly involves sample preparation by dip coating, resulting in a thick size layer with a higher Loss of Ignition (LoI) than industrial sized fibres. This makes it difficult to make useful comparisons between industrial and lab-scale prepared samples when evaluating size performance. This paper presents a novel, but simple, fibre coating technique that produces a size layer similar to industrial sized samples with an average layer thickness one tenth that obtained by dip-coating. Thermogravimetric analysis and electron microscopy results show how the size layer on lab-coated fibres had a morphology much more comparable to that on industrial samples. Average size LoI could be easily controlled in a range from 1 to 5 %, compared to the 11 % obtained on samples dip coated with the same size formulation. Microbond tests results of interfacial shear strength in two different polypropylenes indicate that the lab-sized fibres exhibited comparable values to the industrial-sized fibres and enhanced values compared to the dip coated fibres. These findings highlight the considerable potential of this novel lab-scale coating technique as a viable alternative to dip coating in laboratory research, as it provides a more realistic representation of industrial-scale sizings.

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