A study on fiber orientation during the injection molding of fiber-reinforced polymeric composites (Comparison between image processing results and numerical simulation)

The characteristics of fiber-reinforced plastic composites depend on the qu antity and shape of the fibers. During an injection molding process of comp osites, fiber orientation is produced by the flow state. The molded part te nds to be anisotropic. It is very important to clarify the relationship bet ween the orientation and the injection molding conditions. in this paper, t he distribution of fiber orientation by the image processing method for the injection molded products of each fiber content is measured, and numerical analysis for orientation distribution is conducted, the orientation distri bution by numerical simulation being compared with the results obtained fro m image processing. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.