Abstrait

Fatigue Life Prediction of Short Fiber Reinforced Composite

Kiran Jagdale, A. V. Bhosale

Toincrease stiffness and strength of injection moulded components short glass fibres were added as filler material. The application of short fibre reinforced plastic materials has become more important over the last years, because they can be designed as per specific requirements. Short fibre-reinforced plastics provide the combination of lower weight with adequate strength. The recent trend in industry is to have the lighter product; somany structural parts are manufactured with short fibre-reinforced polymers instead of traditional metal. The design of the final product has to pass assessment of durability or reliability aspects in addition to structural strength aspects. Prediction of fatigue life for fiber reinforced composite identifies critical areas for the product development in early stage, which saves the cost of re-test and redesign. This paper is concerned with animplementation of virtual durability product development process to predict fatigue life of short fibre-reinforced materials. The multi-disciplinary process consists of aninjection moulding simulation, followed by a structural stress analysis and a fatigue calculation. This analysis method and simulation process which takes into account the fibre orientation and distribution as result from moulding simulation have been verified with component test.