Extrusion Injection Moulding

Resin Transfer Moulding

John Summerscales

Extrusion
normally a screw in a barrel pushes a stream of material through a die to produce a constant cross-section. confined to use with discontinuous fibre as the action of the screw breaks fibres not a significant technique in the production of composite components finds use in compounding (mixing) to provide pellets for injection moulding.

Injection Moulding (IM)

closed cavity mould tool placed at the output end of an extruder discrete charges of material are delivered, to "injection mould" components normally thermoplastic matrix, but
RIM = reaction IM for thermosets o RRIM = reinforced RIM for short fibre thermoset composite o SRIM = Structural RIM for pre-loaded continuous fibre composites
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Injection Moulding (IM)

Image from http://www.rutlandplastics.co.uk/

Injection Moulding (IM)

Close

Inject

Open & Eject

Hold

Images from http://www.rutlandplastics.co.uk/

Injection Moulding (IM)

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2 3 9 4 5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Guide Pins Runner Gate Sprue Bush Locating Ring Mould Cavity Ejector Pins The Shot Sprue

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Image from http://www.rutlandplastics.co.uk/

Case study: injection-moulded beamless passenger terminal seating component

Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Zoeftig in Bude - winner of UoP Enterprise Award for KTP of the Year 2009 - images from http://www.zoeftig.com/products.aspx#furniture

Shear controlled technologies

Wolfson Centre for Materials Processing developed Shear Controlled Technologies to improve orientation in short fibre composites
SCOREX: shear controlled orientation in extrusion o SCORIM: sco in injection moulding
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Images from http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/wolfson/cmp/technology

<< SCOREX SCORIM >>

Resin Transfer Moulding

image from http://www.netcomposites.com/education.asp?sequence=59

Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM) for most thermoset resins and fabrics
two moulded surfaces inserts, fixing points and lightweight core materials incorporated at moulding stage. place dry fibre (preform) in mould cavity close mould, then inject resin to fill porespace. cure (thermoset) resin, then remove component from mould. net-shape, so requires only minimal trimming. superior dimensional tolerances to hand-lay/autoclave products reduced worker and environmental hazards
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Elimination of uncontrolled emissions of VOCs.

Magnum Venus Plastech RTM Division schematic

SRIM .. vs .. RTM
SRIM Resin Injection Pressure (kPa) Mould fill time Mould tool polyurethane 10000-40000 < 1 min Steel RTM epoxy or polyester 100-1000 >> 1 min Steel or FRP

Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM)

most composite manufacturing process involve only short range flow of the resin through the laminate thickness RTM involves long-range flow of resin parallel to the laminae, through the porespace between the reinforcement fibres

Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM)

Darcy equation (1856): Q = K.A.P/.L where
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Q = volumetric flow rate K = constant of proportionality (permeability) A = cross section normal to the flow direction P = pressure differential driving the flow = fluid viscosity L = length of mould.

Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM)

not in the examination

Kozeny (1927) - Carman (1937) Q = .A.m2.P/k..L where

is the porosity (1-Vf) o m is the hydraulic radius, o k is the Kozeny constant.
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RTM: fabric compressibility

Quinn and Randall
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Vf = K1 + K2.P P = kE(Vfn - Vfon)

Toll and Mnson

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where
P = applied pressure o K1 and K2 are constants o k = power-law coefficient o E = through-plane modulus of fabric o Vf = fibre volume fraction, o Vfo = limiting fibre volume fraction (P = 0) o n = power-law exponent.
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RTM: viscosity
initial resin viscosity ~200 mPa.s
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1 mPa.s = 1 centipoise.

Becker: upper limit for viscosity = 800 mPa.s non-injection point (NIP) = 1000 mPa.s The flow front is effectively stationary at
this viscosity, and o low pressure used in the process
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RTM: thermoplastics
molten thermoplastic polymers too viscous in-situ polymerisation possible with:
caprolactam (e.g. DSM) to produce polyamide 6, laurolactam (e.g. EMS) to produce polyamide 12 o cyclic butylene terephthalate oligomers (e.g. Cyclics) to produce PBT polyester
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but generally a high-temperature process.

RTM: resin delivery

mixing by static mixers in the resin feed line premixed and fed from a pressure pot
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compressed air above resin drives it to mould

two basic approaches:

constant flow rate with variable pressure (usually via pumps), or o constant pressure with variable flow rate (pressure pot).
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introduce the initial resin at low pressure /flow rate in order to minimise "fibre wash":

RTM: flow strategies

uniaxial (slow)

radial

convergent (fast)
o inlet o vent

RTM: mould tools

with only positive pressure, the mould edges may leak resin. reinforcement can be placed over the seals to provide a path for air to escape with vacuum, it is important that the tool has vacuum integrity
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no paths for air ingress through the tools itself.

some vacuum systems use peripheral channel at higher vacuum than the cavity to clamp the mould halves together.

RTM: flow problems and solutions

reinforcement pack incompletely fills mould
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=> "race tracking => "easy flow paths"

mould deflection
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both may produce dry spots in the component. these feature can be used to generate "galleries" which feed the resin to specific positions in the mould.

RTM: flow processes/voids

at low pressure, flow primarily in tow by capillary effect at high pressure, flow primarily between tows if flow not balanced then air can be trapped leading to voids voids are slowly dissipated by continued resin flow over their surfaces

RTM: typical applications

marine propeller

hull of Advanced Composite Armoured Vehicle Platform (ACAVP)

RTM: typical applications

Lotus car bodies Beneteau yachts British Rail (now First Great Western) High Speed Train cabs Chelton radomes Dowty aircraft propellers jet engine blocker doors

RTM: process simulation

CRIMSON (NIST) LIMS (Delaware) PAM RTM (ESI-Group) RTMFLOT (Montreal) discontinued RTMWorx (NL)
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developed from pi-7/SEPRAN (TNO Delft)

RTMworx simulation of Kok en van Engelen Den Haag (NL) bus seat

RTM: process simulation

other modelling techniques include:
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) o Pore-Cor o Pore-Flow
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mesh-less methods
smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) o finite pointset method (FPM) o natural element method (NEM) o discrete element method (DEM)
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