Modeling compression molding of all-thermoplastic honeycomb core sandwich components.: Part B:: Model verification

The compression molding process for manufacturing of all-thermoplastic honeycomb core sandwich components is studied with the aim of verifying a previously proposed model describing the instantaneous face-core bonding during molding. Experiments are performed with glass/polypropylene (PP) faces and PP honeycomb core and experimental data are compared to model predictions in terms of temperature and degree of face-core interfacial contact with reasonable good agreement. Model predictions show that the face-core interface bond strength may increase with up to 200% when molding at an interface temperature slightly above the crystal melting temperature of the matrix for only a few seconds. The influence of the major process parameters, including molding temperature, molding pressure and core viscosity, on the predicted bond strength is investigated using the model.