Mechanical Properties of Weld Lines in Injection-Molded Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Nylon (PA-CF) Composites

Abstract

Weld lines are a common defect generated in injection molding, which apparently affects the performance of final products, but the available reports on carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastics are still rather few. In this study, the effects of injection temperature, injection pressure, and fiber content on the mechanical properties of weld lines were studied for carbon fiber-reinforced nylon (PA-CF) composites. The weld line coefficient was also calculated by comparing specimens with and without weld lines. The tensile and flexural properties of PA-CF composites significantly increased with the rise of fiber content for specimens without weld lines, while injection temperature and pressure demonstrated slight influences on mechanical properties. However, the existence of weld lines had negative influences on the mechanical properties of PA-CF composites due to poor fiber orientation in weld line regions. The weld line coefficient of PA-CF composites decreased as fiber content increased, indicating that the damage of weld lines to mechanical properties increased. The microstructure analysis showed that there were a large number of fibers distributed vertically to flow direction in weld lines regions, which could not play a reinforcing role. In addition, increasing injection temperature and pressure facilitated fiber orientation, which improved the mechanical properties of composites with low fiber content, while weakening composites with high fiber content instead. This article provides practical information for product design containing weld lines, which helps to optimize the forming process and formula design of PA-CF composites with weld lines.