Textile-based surface design of thermoplastic composites for microstructural adhesion to polyurethane foams for lightweight structures

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn an effort to reduce the mass of components, sandwich design has become well established above all in the aerospace and the vehicle construction. In these structures, facings and cores made of very different materials are joined using a wide variety of technologies. The challenge in the use of this type of construction frequently results both from generating component joints stable enough to bear loads and the productivity of the manufacturing process. This publication investigates the textile-based surface design of thermoplastic composites which create optimised conditions for the bonding of Polyurethane (PUR) foam cores in the in-situ foaming. The reinforcement layer structure is represented on the surface by varying the layer stack in the production of textile-based thermoplastic composites through pressing. This approach is resource and energy-efficiency because it includes no additional process steps. Two thermoplastic composite variants with differently firmed textile surface structure were manufactured and analysed. In reaction injection moulding, each variant was processed with two different PUR foam cores to obtain sandwich structures. Bonding between the facings and the core was only achieved by means of textile microstructuring, which was demonstrated in the analysis of the basic materials and the microstructure penetration through PUR foam as well. The mechanical capacity of the interface was determined by the sandwich structures in the tensile test. In future studies, a bulky, textile-based lightweight construction material in sandwich design that is both suitable for application and capable of being mass produced will be developed based on these investigations.