Novel Semi-Finished Thermoplastic Composite Precursors********

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Thermoplastic composite materials are manufactured by impregnating reinforcement fibers (e.g., glass or carbon) with a melted thermoplastic polymer. The thermoplastic polymer melts are highly viscous. This makes the impregnation of large and/or thick reinforcement fabrics lengthy and complicated. One solution is to combine the solid thermoplastic polymer and reinforcement fibers in a single yarn. Once melted, the impregnation is shortened since the polymer melt is within each yarn of the fabric. The most common composite yarn precursor is the commingled yarn. Commingled yarns are composed of continuous polymer and reinforcement fibers blended through air jets. However, this technology is costly and can damage the reinforcement fibers. FilSpec is one of the leading yarn spinning company in Canada. To stay ahead of competition, they are constantly looking to develop new and high value-added markets with advanced technologies. They recently acquired a core spinning technology called friction spinning, or DREF. We see a great potential to use this technology for composite application since it can combine polymer fibers to reinforcement fibers in one single yarn. DREF spinning technology is cost effective and protect the reinforcement fibers from damage. The objective of this project is to investigate the potential of the DREF spinning to manufacture composite yarn precursors for low cost thermoplastic pultrusion process. During pultrusion, the thermoplastic polymer component of the DREF yarns will melt and impregnate the DREF yarns' glass fiber core to form a composite beam. During the 6 months of this project, 18 batches of DREF-spinned yarns will be made at FilSpec. Each yarn batch will be pultruded at Polytechnique Montreal's Advanced Composite and Fiber Structures laboratory (ACFSlab). Thorough characterization of the yarn and pultruded material will be made. Feedback from this characterization will help develop a proper composite DREF-spinned yarn to demonstrate pultrusion feasibility.