Development of Bending Process for Composite Pipe During Molding Process (abstract only)

Abstract

Fiber reinforced composite materials are utilized in automotive applications as a substitute of steels because of high specific stiffness and strength. If it is achieved that a fiber reinforced composite material is bent during pultrusion molding, it is expected that the utilization of fiber reinforced composite materials will be expanded. Therefore, the bending process during the pultrusion process was examined using braided fabric. Continuous fibers with the thermoplastic resin are used to construct the braided composite pipe for pultrusion. Focusing on the continuous processing of roll forming, a bending machine was introduced after the pultrusion process of a composite pipe. In the previous study, a bending machine that can bend a composite material pipe by three-point bending was devised. When bending was performed with a three-point bending machine, the cross-section of FRP pipe could not be maintained to be an original circular shape because of no core material. Therefore, in order to overcome the problem, a new bending machine which made aluminum molding die with the passage of outlet part shape R and bending by passing the composite material pipe through the molding die was proposed. Furthermore, in order to prevent flattening of the cross-section after bending process, bending was carried out with the core material inserted in the composite material pipe, and the effect of inserting was also examined.