EFFECT OF PROCESSING PARAMETERS ON FIBER ORIENTATION AND DIMENSIONAL PROPERTIES DURING BENDING GF/PP COMPOSITE

The forming process of unidirectional glass fiber reinforced polypropylene GF/PP thermoplastic profiles into v-shaped curved parts is investigated. Setting temperature, heating time, holding time, and heating length are the processing parameters extracted mainly from the developed heating map. The effect of these parameters on fiber alignment and on dimensional properties of formed profiles such as fiber wrinkled length, thickness at curvature, and angle of curvature is investigated. The results show that fiber wrinkled length is increasing by both heating length and processing temperature significantly, while holding the temperature time showed no significant effect In addition, thickness of curvature and angle of curvature show significant decrease with increasing heating length and processing temperature individually or in combination. In contrast, the holding temperature time reveals a slight effect in decreasing the curvature thickness and no significant effect on the curvature angle. Based on the results elaborated a processing map for unidirectional reinforced profiles is developed.