Reinforced directional property

Preform screens are usually made from 16-gauge perforated material with Vs in. holes on / 6 in. centers. This produces about 40% open area. For some operations, a more open area is required. Perforation patterns are also used to develop specifically designed reinforcement directional properties. The screen is usually designed so that the outside contour is identical with the contour of the mating half of the mold. A screen, which is not of the correct size, will cause a great deal of difficulty in... 

Fig. 26.2. The microstructure of wood. Woods ore foams of relative densities between 0.07 and 0.5, with cell walls which ore fibre-reinforced. The properties ore very anisotropic, partly because of the cell shape and partly because the cell-wall fibres ore aligned near the axial direction.

The wide choice available in plastics makes it necessary to select not only between TPs, TSs, reinforced plastics (RPs), and elastomers, but also between individual materials within each family of plastic types (Chapters 6 and 7). This selection requires having data suitable for making comparisons which, apart from the availability of data, depends on defining and recognizing the relevant plastics behavior characteristics. There can be, for instance, isotropic (homogeneous) plastics and plastics that can have different directional properties that run from the isotropic to anisotropic. Here, as an example, certain... 

The reinforcement type and form chosen (woven, braided, chopped, etc.) will depend on the performance requirements and the method of processing the RP (Fig. 6-15). Fibers can be oriented in many different patterns to provide the directional properties desired. Depending on their packing arrangement, different reinforcement-to-plastic ratios are obtained (Appendix A. PLASTICS TOOLBOX). 

Another important orienting fabricating procedure concerns applying directional properties to reinforced plastics. This subject is reviewed in Chapter 3, DESIGN CONCEPT, Reinforced Plastic Directional Property. 

Orientation of reinforcement The behavior of RPs is dominated by the arrangement and the interaction of the stiff, strong fibers with the less stiff, weaker plastic matrix. The features of the structure and the construction determine the behavior of RPs that is important to the designer. A major advantage is the fact that directional properties can be maximized in the plane of the sheet. As shown in Fig. 8-55 they can be isotropic, orthotropic, etc. Basic design theories of combining actions of plastics and reinforcements... 

Most tests will be made on standard test pieces which may be pieces cut from a component or a sheet, or they may have been moulded separately from the same material. Where test pieces or sheet are produced for the trials it is important that they are produced in as near as possible the same way as the product and that the processing conditions are recorded. Different results can be expected from compression and injection moulding or from extrusion (where a choice is possible). Directional properties can result from the conditions of flowing and cooling in a mould. For example, in a study at ERA, the creep strain of unfilled HDPE, either individually moulded or cut from square plaques, varies by up to a factor of two depending on the orientation of flow [40]. This difference becomes even more marked with short fibre reinforcement. 

The reinforcement, as its name indicates, bears the stresses. When these reinforcements are not randomly distributed, which is often the case, the properties are anisotropic, being enhanced in the reinforcement direction. 

An important type of orienting fabricated products concerns applying directional properties to plastics by using fiber reinforcements. Orientation is the alignment of fiber reinforcement within the product that affects mechanical properties. The reinforced plastic (RP) properties increase in the direction of alignment (Figure 3.4). 

Figure 3.4 Examples of reinforced plastic directional properties...

In thermoplastics, the fillers and/or reinforcements can be in the form of particles, fibers or flakes. Fibers can be particularly effective since the flow patterns can create preferential orientation distributions and, therefore, directional properties. Table 10.36 shows typical properties of fibers, indicating the wide difference in strength and modulus compared to that of polymers. Glass fibers are typically 1-2 to 10-50 mm long, with an aspect ratio of 10-50. 

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