JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #81 - May/June 2013 - 64

Technologies & Innovations

Load-related locally
reinforced hybrid structures
- Load-related locally reinforced hybrid structures ......p64
- Damage and harmfulness
of defects .......................p70
- The greening of
carbon fibre ....................p77

IVW has developed a new concept for the construction of hybrid structures, especially for use in the automotive industry.
Through the effective combination of two different lightweight
production methods – a forming process such as compression
moulding or thermoforming and an optimized thermoplastic insitu tape placement process for the accurate positioning of local
reinforcements – major improvements in mechanical properties
and an overall weight reduction can be achieved.

- CFD simulation:
more precise definition
of mixing outcomes .........p79

By
Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Ing. René Holschuh, Researcher,

nge of advanced
rial bonding
s are excellent
ional fastening
ssemblies at lower
s feature outstanding
e custom formulated
on requirements.

automotive

Helping engineers
meet specific
application
requirements
www.masterbond.com

Dipl.-Ing. Jovana Džalto, Researcher,
Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Ing. David Becker, Researcher,
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Mitschang Research Director,
Head of Manufacturing Science Department
Institut für Verbundwerkstoffe.

nidirectional reinforcement with
endless fibres (length > 50 mm)
provides outstanding mechanical
properties in the fibre direction. Thermoplastic in-situ tape placement is a semicontinuous process for manufacturing plane
or even convex and concave parts made of
unidirectional endless fibres and a thermoplastic matrix. In combination with organic
sheets, a stamp-formed base structure can be
easily reinforced in the area of critical loads
where no or few fibres are present. The local
reinforcements can be either applied in a
subsequent process after the forming step
in net-shape quality or in a previous step to

64 jec composites magazine / No81 May - June 2013

allow the accurate positioning of the tapes
without any blurring in the press process.
The UD tapes are applied using the so
called in-situ tape placement process. The
tape-placement head comprises a heating
device (e.g. hot gas torch or laser) to melt
together the thermoplastic matrix of the
base structure and the tape, feeding and cutting systems, as well as a consolidation roll,
which ensures a high joint quality and an insitu compaction through consistent pressure
[1]. Thermoplastic in-situ tape- placement
is an automated discontinuous production
process for panel-formed, weight-optimized
and load-carrying high-performance parts.
The placement process is characterized by
a lay-up of unidirectional fibre-reinforced
thermoplastic tape material, which is successively and accurately placed side-by-side or
stacked by a tape placement head in various
orientations. Therefore, a laminate structure
can be built up with the desired properties
[2].
Using this process, tapes can be joined,
for example, with base structures made of
endless fibre-reinforced thermoplastics, such
as stamp-formed organic sheets (OS), glass
fibre mat-reinforced thermoplastics, or longfibre-reinforced thermoplastics (Figure 1).
The combination of the two processes
induces excellent mechanical behaviour
especially under tensile loads, because the
Young’s modulus of the unidirectional

http://www.masterbond.com

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #81 - May/June 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #81 - May/June 2013