• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.62-68
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• 1993

During compression molding of fibre-reinforced thermoplastics, the two main problems such as the fibre-matrix separation and the fibre orientation are produced by the flow state. As the molded product tends to be nonhomogeneous and anisotropic due to the separation and the orientation, it is necessary to clarify these in relation to the molding process variables and the fibre structure (fibre entanglement). If the entanglement of fibre structure is strong, the separation increases and the orientation is not easily aligned. Namely, these are inseparably related to each other. The correlation between the separation and the orientation have to be clarified for designing the fibre structure. In this paper, the degree of nonhomogeneity which is a measure of the separation is obtained using one-dimensional rectangular shaped part compression molding. And the orientation function is defined and measured by the image processing using soft X-rayed photograph and image scanner. Correlation between the degree of nonhomogeneity and the orientation function is discussed.