Conventional Injection Moulding Research Articles

Advanced thermoplastics and their composites

Composite materials, be they highly oriented continous-fibre structural materials or short-fibre and even particulate composites, remain critically dependent upon matrix properties. Interest in the use of thermoplastic matrices has spread from conventional injection moulding composites into collimated continuous fibre materials. As the critical applications of such materials have been explored, so the demands on matrix properties have become clearer, and potentially more stringent. The demand for advanced properties is set primarily by response of the matrix, and fibre matrix interface to hostile working environments involving temperature, chemical attack, and physical abuse. Such properties are a reflection of molecular structures and their resulting morphology, but the achievement of desirable properties is bounded also by synthesis on the one hand and component fabrication on the other. By definition, such highly engineered materials and their related processes must exhibit ‘reliability’. The paper attempts to relate the interaction between structure and properties for such materials concentrating on high-performance structural composites and a view of the broad requirements if such materials are to have use.