Materials 2016, 9(7), 539; doi:10.3390/ma9070539
Formability Analysis of Bamboo Fabric Reinforced Poly (Lactic) Acid Composites
1
Centre for Advanced Composite Materials (CACM), Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
2
School of Industrial Technology, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang 11800, Malaysia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Kim Pickering
Received: 20 April 2016 / Revised: 21 June 2016 / Accepted: 22 June 2016 / Published: 2 July 2016
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bio- and Natural-Fiber Composites)
Abstract
Poly (lactic) acid (PLA) composites have made their way into various applications that may require thermoforming to produce 3D shapes. Wrinkles are common in many forming processes and identification of the forming parameters to prevent them in the useful part of the mechanical component is a key consideration. Better prediction of such defects helps to significantly reduce the time required for a tooling design process. The purpose of the experiment discussed here is to investigate the effects of different test parameters on the occurrence of deformations during sheet forming of double curvature shapes with bamboo fabric reinforced-PLA composites. The results demonstrated that the domes formed using hot tooling conditions were better in quality than those formed using cold tooling conditions. Wrinkles were more profound in the warp direction of the composite domes compared to the weft direction. Grid Strain Analysis (GSA) identifies the regions of severe deformation and provides useful information regarding the optimisation of processing parameters. View Full-TextKeywords:
bamboo fabric; defects; grid strain analysis; natural fibre fabrics; poly (lactic) acid; thermoforming
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M. R., N.F.; Jayaraman, K.; Bhattacharyya, D. Formability Analysis of Bamboo Fabric Reinforced Poly (Lactic) Acid Composites. Materials 2016, 9, 539.
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