Thermoplastic Reaction Injection Pultrusion for Continuous Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polyamide-6 Composites
Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Institute of Plastic Machinery and Engineering, Beijing 100029, China
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Materials 2019, 12(3), 463; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12030463
Received: 14 January 2019
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Revised: 27 January 2019
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Accepted: 30 January 2019
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Published: 2 February 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Metal and Polymer Matrix Composites: Processing and Applications)
In this paper, glass fiber-reinforced polyamide-6 (PA-6) composites with up to 70 wt% fiber contents were successfully manufactured using a pultrusion process, utilizing the anionic polymerization of caprolactam (a monomer of PA-6). A novel thermoplastic reaction injection pultrusion test line was developed with a specifically designed injection chamber to achieve complete impregnation of fiber bundles and high speed pultrusion. Process parameters like temperature of injection chamber, temperature of pultrusion die, and pultrusion speed were studied and optimized. The effects of die temperature on the crystallinity, melting point, and mechanical properties of the pultruded composites were also evaluated. The pultruded composites exhibited the highest flexural strength and flexural modulus, reaching 1061 MPa and 38,384 MPa, respectively. Then, effects of fiber contents on the density, heat distortion temperature, and mechanical properties of the composites were analyzed. The scanning electron microscope analysis showed the great interfacial adhesion between fibers and matrix at 180 °C, which greatly improved the mechanical properties of the composites. The thermoplastic reaction injection pultrusion in this paper provided an alternative for the preparation of thermoplastic composites with high fiber content.
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Keywords:
glass fiber; thermoplastic composites; pultrusion; thermal analysis; mechanical properties
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MDPI and ACS Style
Chen, K.; Jia, M.; Sun, H.; Xue, P. Thermoplastic Reaction Injection Pultrusion for Continuous Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polyamide-6 Composites. Materials 2019, 12, 463. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12030463
AMA Style
Chen K, Jia M, Sun H, Xue P. Thermoplastic Reaction Injection Pultrusion for Continuous Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polyamide-6 Composites. Materials. 2019; 12(3):463. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12030463
Chicago/Turabian StyleChen, Ke, Mingyin Jia, Hua Sun, and Ping Xue. 2019. "Thermoplastic Reaction Injection Pultrusion for Continuous Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polyamide-6 Composites" Materials 12, no. 3: 463. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12030463
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