Long glass fibre reinforced injection

D. E. Mouzakis, T. Harmia, J. Karger-Kocsis (2000) Fracture behaviour of discontinuous long glass fibre reinforced injection moulded polypropylene, Polym. Polym. Compos. 8, 167. 

Currently, one of the most important applications is the front-end of recent cars such as the Mini Cooper from BMW, Mazda 6, Audi A6, Ford Focus and VW Polo, associating long glass fibre reinforced polypropylene injected onto stamped metal, which leads to weight savings in the range of 30-35% compared to traditional solutions. 

It was proved that the long fibres assure to the composites a higher resistance that the short ones, and are characterised by specific fracture properties. The microstructure and fracture mechanical behaviour of injection-moulded longer glass fibres reinforced polypropylene (Verton, aspect ratio 320) were studied as a function of the fibre volume fraction and compared to that of a shorter... 

J. L. Thomason (2002) The influence of fibre length and concentration on the properties of glass fibre reinforced polypropylene 5. Injection moulded long and short fibre PP, Composites AH, 1641. 

Fibre-reinforced NR composites are manufactured by various processes, the most common being extrusion, injection moulding and compression moulding (Figure 9.6). To fabricate glass-reinforced NR composites with unidirectional long fibres, extrusion is not used because this process can only result in short fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites (a few millimetres at most). 

Thermoplastic resins are generally reinforced with short fibres (for use with injection moulding and not considered in this book), with long fibres (thermoplastic sheet compound, Chapter 5) or with glass mat (i.e. glass mat thermoplastics or GMT). Polypropylene is the resin most used as the matrix for GMT and the reinforcement is usually a random mat, primarily chopped strand but it may be continuous filament or needled mat. 

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