Coextruded tape technology

Consolidation of Composites by Using Coextruded Tape Technology... 

Following commercialisation of the concept of using coextruded tape technology to create self-reinforced polymer composites based on PP by Lankhorst Pure Composites (The Netherlands) as the product PURE, the mechanical properties were also assessed by Abraham et al. [173] and Banik et al. [174, 175]. A very similar concept for creating self-reinforced polymer composites was also presented by Kim et al. [176], although this time using commercially available coextruded... 

Alcock et al. [161], presented in Fig. 14, show that although the mechanical properties of the reinforcement phase are much lower than for the other reinforcements presented here, the efficiency of retention of reinforcement properties in these final composites is higher. This was achieved by the use of the hot compaction technology by Rasbum et al. [135] and the coextruded tape technology by Alcock et al. [161] to obtain high volume fractions of reinforcement, combined with careful processing conditions to retain the molecular orientation (and so high mechanical properties) of the reinforcement phase in both cases. 

Fig. 11 Effect of consolidation temperature on the flexural stiffness of unidirectional composites produced by using coextruded PP tape technology. Over the range of consolidation temperature considered here, there is no significant effect on the mechanical properties of the final composite, indicating that this large temperature window would make composites based on coextruded tapes less susceptible to thermal relaxation during consolidation than systems with a smaller temperature processing window. Reproduced with kind permission from Sage Publieatioiis frran [159]...

Most published work that has been identified as describing forming of self-reinforced polymer composites has been performed on PP-based systems, because, to date, these systems have received most attention as possible commercial products. Self-reinforced polymer composites based on the hot compaction concept reported by Ward and coworkers at the University of Leeds [33] have been commercialised into a product branded as Curv (formerly by BP Amoco, later by Propex Fabrics, USA) [225]. The use of coextruded PP tape technology, as reported by Peijs and coworkers [5], has been commercialised and branded as PURE (by Lankhorst Pure Composites, The Netherlands) [226], and also licensed to Milliken and Company, USA who market the material as Tegris (formerly as MFT) [227, 228, 270]. An apparently similar composite technology based on coextruded PP tapes has also been commercialised as Armordon (by Don and Low, UK) [229]. 

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