PNNL

Abstract

This report summarizes our FY 2009 research activities for the project titled:"Engineering Property Prediction Tools for Tailored Polymer Composite Structures." These activities include (i) the completion of the development of a fiber length attrition model for injection-molded long-fiber thermoplastics (LFTs), (ii) development of the a fatigue damage model for LFTs and its implementation in ABAQUS, (iii) development of an impact damage model for LFTs and its implementation in ABAQUS, (iv) development of characterization methods for fatigue testing, (v) characterization of creep and fatigue responses of glass-fiber/polyamide (PA6,6) and glass-fiber/polypropylene (PP), (vi) characterization of fiber length distribution along the flow length of glass/PA6,6 and glass-fiber/PP, and (vii) characterization of impact responses of glass-fiber/PA6,6. The fiber length attrition model accurately captures the fiber length distribution along the flow length of the studied glass-fiber/PP material. The fatigue damage model is able to predict the S-N and stiffness reduction data which are valuable to the fatigue design of LFTs. The impact damage model correctly captures damage accumulation observed in experiments of glass-fiber/PA6,6 plaques.Further work includes validations of these models for representative LFT materials and a complex LFT part.