FIBRE REINFORCED THERMOPLASTICS COMPRESSION MOULDING MODELLED AS ANISOTROPIC NON-NEWTONIAN FLOWS

摘要

The isothermal squeezing flow of Glass Reinforced Thermoplastics (GMT) was previously confirmed to behave anisotropically, and a transversely isotropic Newtonian fluid model was applied to fit the experimental data. The model was used to calculate the extensional viscosities, and was compared to the viscosity calculated from an isotropic model, showing a difference up to 20% between the two models. In this work the GMT squeezing flow is modelled as a transversely isotropic power-law fluid. The model is solved for the three power law viscosity parameters, which are found from the geometrical shape of the elliptically deformed specimens, the applied force and the strain rates in the three directions. Good agreement between the experimental applied stress and the predicted curves from the model has been achieved.