STAMPING RHEOLOGY OF GLASS MAT REINFORCED THERMOPLASTIC COMPOSITES

Glass mat reinforced thermoplastics (GMTs) offer a useful combination of mechanical properties and formability. In principle, these composites may be based on any thermoplastic matrix. In practice, matrix selection is limited because of its impact on the manufacturing and compression molding processes. In this work an isothermal squeezing flow technique is used to determine the apparent biaxial extensional viscosities of polycarbonate, polybutylene terephthalate, and polypropylene-based GMTs. Experimental load-deformation data are interpreted by treating the GMTs as viscous, incompressible Newtonian fluids. Two primary effects are observed: (1) the composites appear to strain harden as they are deformed, and (2) GMT apparent biaxial extensional viscosities correlate with the high rate of deformation shear viscosities of the matrices. A mechanism that explains the second result is proposed.