Thermoplastic composites for high volume production

Abstract

Fiber reinforced plastics are often used as lightweight materials where conventional materials, especially metals find their limits. Up to now, a thermosetting resin is often used as matrix even though using thermoplastics brings some advantages like a higher impact resistance to comparable thermoset composites, weldability and recyclability. In addition, it is possible to reshape or to weld the thermoplastic composites. To show some of the possibilities, some recent developments are shown. Especially highly filled thermoplastic composites produced by In-Situ-Pultrusion are demonstrated, because they are supposed to be used as local reinforcement of injection molded plastic parts. For this purpose, the pultruded parts are overmolded after being inserted into the injection mold.