Frontier Direction of Pultrusion Technology, Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic Composites

 

 

The pultrusion process (pultrusion) is to form and solidify the prepreg yarn through an extrusion die under the action of traction, and continuously produce hollow and special-shaped products of unlimited length.

 

If you need to get long and thin door and window profiles or concrete reinforcement, it is time for the pultrusion process to come on stage. The fibers in the pultruded profile are completely consistent with the load direction, making the finished product particularly excellent in terms of material and weight.

 

In 2017, KraussMaffei took the lead in launching a turnkey pultrusion system – iPul (Figure 5), and it continues to generate strong interest in the construction, wind energy and automotive industries.

 

The iPul system integrates resin injection and profile traction lines, which can realize the full process control of glass fiber and carbon fiber pultrusion molding process, helping to improve efficiency and reduce costs in the production of composite profiles.

 

The iPul system comes with molds, metering machines and various accessories, and can reach a high production speed of 3 meters/minute. Close cooperation with material partners Covestro, Huntsman and Evonik made the processing of highly reactive matrix materials possible.

 

 

CQFD, a French company specializing in thermoplastic composite pultrusion, has developed an in-situ pultrusion process, in which fiber yarn or fabric is impregnated with caprolactam monomer and initiator under external traction, and then formed and heated in a fixed mold to polymerize to finally form a product.

 

The fiber volume fraction of the product formed by this process can reach 70%, and the tensile modulus in the fiber direction can reach 60 GPa (the reinforcing fiber is glass fiber), with excellent specific strength and specific modulus.

 

This process is applied to the FRTP anti-collision beam developed by CQFD, Plastic Omnium and Hyundai Motor. The main body is formed by in-situ pultrusion process, and the material is continuous glass fiber reinforced PA6 (trade name C-SHOCK®). Then, the installation point of the anti-collision beam is introduced through the coating injection molding process. The whole solution is 43% lighter (3.7 kg) than the metal beam solution.

 

As the cost of carbon fiber is likely to decrease in the next few years, this breakthrough concept will help the automotive industry achieve weight reduction goals to achieve energy saving goals (Figure 6).