Development of Pultrusion Method for Fabricating FRTP and FRP with Phenolic Resin

Abstract

Phenolic resin has originally advantages of heat proof, fire resistance and less smoke during burning and a good balance between its cost and mechanical properties compared with other resins using in FRPs. The composite with phenolic resin having these advantages is the one of the suitable materials for structures of vessels and railway carriages. This paper presents a pultrusion method for fabricating fiber reinforced thermoplastics (FRTPs) and fiber reinforced plastics (FRPs) using a novolak phenolic resin. The novolak resin with curing agent is solid state under the room temperature and can be changed to two states of thermoplastic state and thermosetting state according to a heating temperature. Therefore, the pultrusion method combined with an extruder for fabricating the phenolic FRTP was developed. Next, two kinds of FRPs were fabricated by using the developed FRTP. One was a subsequent pultrusion molding and another was a hot press molding, respectively. In the hot press molding, the FRTP was used as an intermediate material. In addition, their mechanical properties were compared with each other based on tensile and bending tests.