Thermal effects on weld and unweld tensile properties of injection moulded short glass fibre reinforced ABS composites

• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Budapest University of Technology 2007-10-01
• Series: eXPRESS Polymer Letters
• Subjects: Polymer composites; Weldline; Temperature; Mechanical properties
• Online Access: http://www.expresspolymlett.com/letolt.php?file=EPL-0000346&mi=cd

The effect of temperature on weldline properties of injection moulded acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) reinforced with short glass fibres was investigated in tension between 25 and 100°C. Tensile modulus of both weld and unweld specimens increased linearly with increasing fibre concentration and decreased linearly with increasing temperature. It was found that the presence of weldline had no significant effect upon tensile modulus and this was reflected by weldline integrity factors in the range 0.98 to 0.95. Tensile strength of both weld and unweld tensile specimens increased nonlinearly with increasing fibre concentration and in the case of weldline specimens showed a maximum at fibre concentration of approximately 10% v/v. A linear dependence with respect to volume fraction of fibres was found for specimens without weldline for fibre concentrations in the range 0–10% v/v. The weldline integrity factor for tensile strength decreased significantly with increasing fibre concentration and increased with increasing temperature. The effect of temperature on tensile modulus and strength was satisfactorily modelled using the Kitagawa power law relationship..