State-of-the-Art on numerical simulation of fiber-reinforced Thermoplastic Forming Processes

Jalel Azaiez (1) , Kunji Chiba (2) , Francisco Chinesta (3) , Arnaud Poitou (4)

1 Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering [Calgary]
2 Shiga University
3 LMSP - Laboratoire de Mécanique des Systèmes et des Procédés
4 LMT - Laboratoire de Mécanique et Technologie

Short fiber reinforced composites have gained increasing technological importance due to their versatility that lends them to a wide range of applications. These composites are useful because they include a reinforcing phase in which high tensile strengths can be reached, and a matrix that allows to hold the reinforcement and to transfer applied stress to it. It is a well-known fact, that such materials can have excellent mechanical, thermal and electrical properties that make them widely used in industry. During the manufacture process, fibers adopt a preferential orientation that can vary significantly across the geometry. Once the suspension is cooled or cured to make a solid composite, the fiber orientation becomes a key feature of the final product since it affects the elastic modulus, the thermal and electrical conductivities, and the strength of the composite material. In this work we analyzed the state-of-the-art and the recent developments in the numerical modeling of short fiber suspensions involved in industrial flows.

Domaines: Mécanique [physics.med-ph]; Matériaux

Jalel Azaiez, Kunji Chiba, Francisco Chinesta, Arnaud Poitou. State-of-the-Art on numerical simulation of fiber-reinforced Thermoplastic Forming Processes. Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering, 2002, 9 (2), pp.141-198. ⟨10.1007/BF02736650⟩. ⟨hal-01007319⟩