Engineering Faculty Internship Initiative: Reduced Fiber Damage in Injection Molding and Extrusion

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Fiber damage is a major problem in injection molding and extrusion. The full benefit of fibers as a reinforcement is not attained in these processes because the fibers are reduced to a fraction of their original length. Prior research have examined the damage mechanisms with the aim of understanding how the process can be changed to maintain longer fibers. It is clear that it is the exposure of the fibers to the melt, machinery and other fibers that cause fiber damage, although the extent of each process has not been investigated thoroughly. Tailored experiments will be performed to reveal the mechanisms of fiber damage. Experiments will be performed to examine addition of the initial material in different forms, such as powder resin/fibers, encapsulated pellets with different aspect ratios; addition of the fibers separate from the resin in different zones and the processing conditions in the resulting fiber degradation. The potential impact if this research is large since it will directly impact injection molding and extrusion which are high volume processes. Reduced fiber damage implies that the strength, stiffness and impact properties of components made with these processes will be considerably higher than the present state of the art.//