Learn more about “A Virtual Process Chain for Glass Mat Thermoplastics As A Basis for Digital Product Development”.
Our co-founder Dr. Dominik Dörr will present at this year’s SPE ACCE in Detroit/Novi the seminal results he has achieved as a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) within a project with General Motors Research & Development.
If you are joining SPE ACCE feel free to listen to his talk or to visit him at booth 106 of the Fraunhofer Innovation Platform (FIP) at Western University.
Dominik’s presentation addresses Tepex flowcore, a long glass fiber reinforced polyamide (PA/GF) glass mat manufactured by Lanxess. Tepex flowcore consists of long glass fibers with random orientation and belongs to the material class of GMT with an engineering polymer, i.e. PA6. Press molding of flowcore can be divided into two different stages, namely material forming and material flow. These stages can include challenges like local wrinkling and incomplete mold filling, respectively. Moreover, manufacturing might be accompanied by process-induced deformations (PID) after solidification and ejection from the mold, the so-called warpage. In this study, a sequential simulation approach including the sub-steps forming, flow, and warpage simulation is presented. Using this approach, the best-suited numerical technique is chosen for each sub-step, while constitutive modeling remains continuous through a unified material modeling approach and the retainment of relevant state variables. The virtual process chain is applied to different geometries with varying complexity and correlated to experimental results for validation.