Warpage of injection-molded automotive B pillar trim fabricated with ramie fiber-reinforced polypropylene composites

Abstract

This study investigated the warpage of injection-molded automotive interior component (B pillar trim) fabricated with four types of short ramie fiber (RF) reinforced polypropylene (PP) composites with different fiber percentages, namely, 0RF/PP, 10RF/PP, 20RF/PP, and 30RF/PP. The effects of injection-molding process parameters and the fiber addition on the warpage of the component were investigated through numerical simulation using orthogonal experiment method. The results showed that packing pressure and filling time were the most important factors affecting warpage. And the minimal warpage values of the components made of 0RF/PP, 10RF/PP, 20RF/PP, and 30RF/PP were of 3.632, 3.698, 4.070, and 3.798 mm, respectively, at their own specific optimized process parameters. Additionally, fiber addition also plays an important role on the warping deformation of the component. The warpage increased first and then decreased with the increase of fiber addition, and an inflection point occurred at 20 wt% fiber addition. This is because the fiber orientation can promote the warping deformation, while the increase of composite's modulus due to the fiber addition can hinder the warping deformation.

Multi-objective crashworthiness optimization of vehicle body with negative Poisson’s ratio structure based on factorial analysis

“…It can be seen from the literature that the studies about the B-pillar and other side structures mainly focused on improving its crashworthiness by optimizing the topology structure, using different materials and filling some energy-absorbing materials inside. 15–18 These methods can enhance side crashworthiness to a certain extent; however, it is challenging to make further improvements on vehicle side crashworthiness due to the limitations of space and cost. Compared with the ordinary structure, the negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR) structure exhibits better mechanical property, such as lower mass, higher energy absorption, and impact resistance.…”

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation for injection molding flow of short fiber-reinforced polymer composites

“…The reason for that is the effect of fiber interaction was not taken into consideration in Chen et al. 5 and Kim et al. 44 while it was investigated in this study.…”

“…Usually, the flow behavior and fiber orientation play important roles on the quality of the components produced with injection molding process. 3–7…”

“…Usually, the flow behavior and fiber orientation play important roles on the quality of the components produced with injection molding process. [3][4][5][6][7] There are some researches [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] related to simulating injection molding flow of fiber-reinforced polymer composites. Most of these works have used mesh methods (such as the finite element method and the finite volume method) to investigate two-dimension (2D) and 3D fiber orientation with tensors based on the works of Advani and Tucker 17 and Bay and Tucker.…”

Properties and Structure of Fiber-Reinforced Injection-Molded Part

“…Aihua Xiong et al [9] also drew the same conclusion based on the Taguchi method for experiment design. Chen et al [10] studied the warping deformation of products with different fiber contents. As the content of fiber increased, the warping deformation increased and then decreased.…”