Influence of formulation parameters on the properties of thermoplastic fabric reinforced composites

Composite materials find widespread use nowadays, often in applications where the superior balance of mechanical properties and low density is an advantage over other materials. Younger aspects like recycling, short cycletimes, thermoforming or overmolding make it necessary to change from thermoset to thermoplastic matrices. Therefore the aim of this was to investigate different thermoplastic polymers as a matrix for glass fibre reinforced composites and their resulting properties. We investigated two different matrices (PA6 and PET) with different glass fabrics which where processed by film stacking in a hot press. The second part of the research compared the PA6 film stacking material with a vacuum bag infusion process of a dry stack which was infused with ε- Caprolactam, which was then polymerised to PA6 to yield composite plates. We found, that the difference in mechanical properties between the two applied thermoplastic polymers is rather low, due tho similar fibre volume fractions and porosity values. For the PA6 composite, infusion and polymerization seems to be a valid approach to yield such materials, giving comparable or even exceeding properties, mainly due to better impregnation of the fibres due to the lower viscosity of the monomer.