EMTA’s Evaluation of the Elastic Properties for Fiber Polymer Composites Potentially Used in Hydropower Systems

Nguyen, Ba Nghiep ; Paquette, Joshua

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (U.S.)

关键词: Compression;    Hydropower System, Discontinuous Fiber Composite, Injection Molding, Compression Molding, Elastic Stiffness, Property Prediction, Fiber Orientation, Fiber Length Distribution, Thermoplastic, Thermoset;    Fibers;    Molding;    36 Materials Science;   

DOI  :  10.2172/992373
RP-ID  :  PNNL-19729
RP-ID  :  AC05-76RL01830
RP-ID  :  992373

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

Fiber-reinforced polymer composites can offer important advantages over metals where lightweight, cost-effective manufacturing and high mechanical performance can be achieved. To date, these materials have not been used in hydropower systems. In view of the possibility to tailor their mechanical properties to specific applications, they now have become a subject of research for potential use in hydropower systems. The first step in any structural design that uses composite materials consists of evaluating the basic composite mechanical properties as a function of the as-formed composite microstructure. These basic properties are the elastic stiffness, stress-strain response, and strength. This report describes the evaluation of the elastic stiffness for a series of common discontinuous fiber polymer composites processed by injection molding and compression molding in order to preliminarily estimate whether these composites could be used in hydropower systems for load-carrying components such as turbine blades. To this end, the EMTA (Copyright © Battelle 2010) predictive modeling tool developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been applied to predict the elastic properties of these composites as a function of three key microstructural parameters: fiber volume fraction, fiber orientation distribution, and fiber length distribution. These parameters strongly control the composite mechanical performance and can be tailored to achieve property enhancement. EMTA uses the standard and enhanced Mori-Tanaka type models combined with the Eshelby equivalent inclusion method to predict the thermoelastic properties of the composite based on its microstructure.