Analysis of rubber pressure molding technique to fabricate fiber reinforced plastic components

Abstract

AbstractA rubber pressure molding technique is developed to prepare fiber reinforced plastic components having complex shaped geometry. The technique is based on the matching die set, where the die is made of hard metal like steel and the punch from flexible rubber like materials. The use of flexible rubber punch helps to intensify and uniformly redistribute pressure (both operating pressure and developed hydrostatic pressure due to the flexible rubber punch) over the surface of product. The distribution of pressure was analyzed by ANSYS over a processing pressure of 0.5 to 50 MPa. The analysis was extended to find out the optimum hardness of rubber mold, where the pressure distribution is uniform. For this, analysis was carried out for NR vulcanizates where the loading of carbon black was varied from 0 to 75 phr, with an increment of 15 phr using the strain energy density function of two‐, three‐, five‐, and nine‐parameter Mooney–Rivlin, first‐, second‐, and third‐order Ogden, Neo–Hookean, first‐, second‐, and third‐order Polynomial, Arruda–Boyce, first‐, second‐, and third‐order Yeoh and Gent. 45 phr carbon black loading in NR vulcanizate shows best result. POLYM. COMPOS., 28:637–649, 2007. © 2007 Society of Plastics Engineers