Browse Topic: Glass fibers
This Purchase Specification (PS), AMS3970/5, specifies the batch release and delivery requirements for the companion non-structural glass fiber fabric prepreg. This specification also defines the procedure and requirements for storage life extension of materials purchased against this specification. It is only applicable for materials which are qualified and shall be carried out within the responsibility of the purchaser and under control of its Quality organization.
Shipbuilders didn’t have the option of fiberglass when the nonprofit American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) was established 160 years ago to help safeguard life and property on the seas. Fortunately, technology to help better ensure the safety of ocean vessels has also come a long way in that time, in part because people have become a spacefaring species.
Anode-free sodium metal batteries (AFSMBs) with initial zero sodium anodes are promising energy-storage devices to achieve high energy density and low cost. The morphology and reversibility of sodium controls the cycling lifespan of the AFSMBs, which is directly affected by the separator. Here, we compared the sodium deposition and corresponding electrochemical behaviors under the influence of three commercial separators, which were Celgard 2500, Al2O3-coated PP separator and glass fiber (denoting as 2500, C-PP and GF). Firstly, the reversibility of sodium plating/stripping was tested using half-cells, where coulombic efficiencies were stable at ~99.89% for C-PP and GF compare to 99.65% for 2500, indicating more dead sodium were formed for 2500. Then, the morphologies of deposited sodium were compared using optical microscopy. Compared to inhomogeneous sodium growth under 2500, C-PP obtained more flatter sodium layer with less height difference, attributing to the high mechanical strength of Al2O3 layer. Differently, we discovered that sodium was grown into pores in GF to form sodium particles with large active surface, which contacts with sufficient electrolytes and could be reversibly stripped. The reversibility of the sodium in GF were further verified using in situ X-ray diffraction tests. Accordingly, cycling performance of AFSMBs were improved using C-PP and GF, where capacity retention after 120 cycles were 56.9%, 61.6% and 69.2% for 2500, C-PP and GF, respectively. Moreover, the AFSMB using 2 mAh cm-2 Na[Ni1/3Fe1/3Mn1/3]O2 as cathode with GF exhibiting excellent capacity of 117.61 mAh g-1 under high current density of 1 C. Subsequently, in situ EIS tests after/during charging/discharging process were further conducted to illustrate the enhancement of rate and cycling performance. This work demonstrates the effect of separators on the sodium deposition for higher irreversibility and stability, which could also offer insights for developing advanced separators to achieve high performance AFSMBs.
Additive manufacturing is currently being investigated for the production of components aiming for near net shape. The presence of chopped glass fibers with PA6 increases the melt viscosity and also changes the coefficients of thermal expansion and increase the heat resistance. The great dimensional stability obtained with the fusion of the PA6 with the fiber results in an extremely durable material even in adverse environments for many other materials used in 3D printing. PA6 is a material oriented for users who need to make structural parts and exposed to high mechanical stresses. The impact, test tensile, and flexural results for as-built PA6 with various infill patterns, including grid, triangle, trihexagon, and cubic, are tested.
Manufacturing processes impact many factors on a product. Depending on the selected method, development time, part performance and cost are affected. In the automotive sector, there is a growing demand for weight reduction due to the advent of electrification and the greenhouse gas emission regulations. In addition, geometric complexity is a challenging factor for the feasibility of mass production of parts. In this scenario, plastic materials are a very interesting option for application in various vehicle parts, since these materials can be molded by injection, vacuum forming, among others, while maintaining good mechanical properties. Almost a third of a vehicle’s parts are polymeric, making the development of these materials strategic for car manufacturers. This article investigates the impact of the presence of fiberglass in a thermoplastic automotive body part. Three rounds of injection simulations were performed using Autodesk Moldflow Adviser considering polypropylene with 20 %, 30 %, and 40 % of fiberglass in its composition. A parametric analysis is performed and the performance curves for volumetric shrinkage at ejection and deflection are plotted. The higher the fiberglass percentage, the higher the impact strength, dimensional stability, and stiffness.
Vehicle weight reduction is important to improve the fuel mileage of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles and to extend the range of Electric Vehicles (EVs). Glass Fiber Reinforced (GFR) Composite (Polyamide) brackets provide significant weight reductions at a competitive part price. Traditionally, metal brackets are designed to surpass a target natural frequency and static stiffness. Composite brackets are inherently less stiff and have lower natural frequencies. However, composite brackets also have higher material damping than metal brackets, and good isolation performance can be achieved. The key to integrating composite brackets into the vehicle design is to perform adequate analysis to ensure that the noise and vibration performance at the vehicle level meets expectations. In this paper, case studies are presented for two different vehicles – a Clevis bracket for an IC Engine vehicle, and an electric motor mount bracket. For each case, measurement data is used to develop simulator models for the vehicles with the traditional metal brackets as well as the composite brackets, and the models are used to make a comparative evaluation of passenger noise for different driving conditions.
Numerically investigating the effects of fiber orientation angles and control factors which is an important factor for minimize the deflection of laminated composites. This paper aims to observe the deflection analysis of laminated rectangular plates subjected to cantilever-type loading. The plates are made up of Glass fiber reinforced polymer composite (GFRP). The plates are having 12 plies, are subjected to self-weight, and are analyzed using different orientation angles by using the finite element method. Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array is being used to obtain different orientation angles of fiber and arrangements. The orientation angle for 3 control factors varies between (10° to 90°) and for 4 control factors between (7.5° to 90°). The Signal to Noise (S/N) ratio is used to estimate the optimum levels for minimum deflection value of control factors. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is performed for analysing the responses which have powerful influential control factors and their percentage contribution.
Formic acid can be obtained from the captured carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the vicinity of traffic-congested points. This work included the conversion of formic acid into Methanol at a controlled temperature of 300 °C and a pressure of 1.1 bar approximately. The experimental setup includes the mass flow rate controller for the utilization of formic acid in the reaction chamber and the mass flow rate monitor that measures the volume of methanol coming out of the reaction chamber. The inside surface of the reaction chamber is coated with anti-corrosive material, which is glass fiber reinforcement to prevent the corrosion effect of formic acid. The reaction chamber contains reactants of copper oxides (0.75-0.80 grams) as catalysts and graphene oxide (115-120 grams) as reducing agents in powder form. The reaction has been performed in a closed atmosphere for a period of eight to ten hours and the temperature is maintained at 300°C approximately. The yield of the methanol is from 30-35% of the weight of the aqueous solution formic acid (0.12g/L) as input. Methanol obtained from this experiment is 90% of methanol and 10% of water approximately. This methanol can be used by blending with gasoline as fuel for the spark-ignition engines to replace 100% of gasoline. Also, some percentage of methanol can be blended with diesel for fueling compression ignition engines. This in turn decreases the dependency on gasoline and diesel, which are manufactured from fossil fuels as input.
Silica-based glass optical fibers without coating can withstand temperatures greater than 600°C. However, glass fibers need to be protected from the environment. Standard telecom fibers are typically coated with acrylate that allow their use in temperatures up to 85°C. Specialty optical fibers can be produced with a polyimide coating, which allows these fibers to be used in environments up to 300°C. This type of fiber has been used extensively in the oil and gas industry to provide important communications and sensing functions for reservoir management.
During aircraft wing assembly, machined fiberglass shims are often used between mating parts to compensate for inherent geometric variability due to manufacturing. At present, fiberglass shims for large aerospace structures, such as shims attached to wing ribs, are manufactured either manually or by precision machining, both of which pose a challenge due to tight tolerance requirements and wide geometric variations in the aircraft structures. Relative to articulated arm industrial robots, gantry-style computer numerical control (CNC) machines are costly, consume large footprints, and are inflexible in the application. Therefore, industrial robots are viewed as potential candidates to replace these gantry systems to facilitate metrology, shim machining, and permanent joining of aircraft structure, with all these processes taking place in the assembly process step. However, the accuracy of articulated arm robots is limited by errors in kinematic calibration, gear backlash, joint compliance, controller performance, and mechanical deformation of the robot structure during machining. Therefore, industrial robots are currently unable to meet the strict accuracy requirements for aerospace parts without error compensation methods. This article presents a control architecture that utilizes real-time closed-loop position feedback derived from a high-accuracy laser tracker to improve the machining accuracy of articulated arm industrial robots. In addition, the article evaluates the performance of two closed-loop control methodologies in robotic milling, namely, controlling for path error versus controlling for trajectory error. The control methodologies are tested in robotic milling of fiberglass coupons along a curvilinear (sinusoidal) path. In addition, the best control methodology is tested in robotic milling of fiberglass shims installed on the mating surfaces of a 3.5 m aluminum aircraft wing rib. The dimensional accuracies and surface finish of the machined features using the proposed control methodologies are shown to be within acceptable tolerances for machined fiberglass shims.
Electric vehicle is the current trend in automotive industry. A light weight material at affordable cost is preferred for these types of vehicles. Composite is a suitable material for this due to their attractive strength-to-weight ratio. Even though carbon fiber reinforced composites provide very good strength and modulus its usage is limited because of their higher price. Hybrid laminates stacked with glass/carbon/kevlar fiber layer shall provide good strength at lower cost. This work focus on the flexural behaviour of glass fiber reinforced laminates stacked with carbon and kevlar fiber as outer layer. Laminates were prepared by hand lay-up method. Three-point bending test was conducted as per ASTM standard. A significant improvement in flexural modulus and bending resistance was observed for the glass/carbon-epoxy hybrid laminates when compared with the glass-epoxy laminate. The failure mechanism was also studied using optical micrographs.
This paper presents the free surface behaviour of liquid while degas tank bottle is in service. The liquid in the degas tank is subjected to exceed the mean line in the service and the fluid levels in all chambers varies as there is continuous movement and sloshing in the fluid. The objective of this work is to optimize the baffle design such that the fluid level in the tank does not exceed the mean line in service and fluid in the all chambers will be maintained at same level. The scope of work is also to enhance the tank baffles which will further dampen the fluid sloshing and the fluid de-aeration should be done effectively to avoid any possible structural damage. The simulation of liquid free surface behaviour is done using commercial CFD software. A numerical model is developed based on Volume of Fluid (VOF) technique to track the free surface motion of liquid. The explicit time discretization scheme is employed to solve the volume fraction equation. From the numerical analysis, amplitude of free surface elevation and slope of free surface are predicted. Experiments are carried out with transparent fuel tank, fabricated using glass fiber. The CFD simulation results are then validated with the test results and are pretty much similar. This methodology of degas tank design has been further optimized for better performance of the tank.
With the increasing need for developing fuel-efficient and high-performance vehicles, light weighting has become a very important aspect in automotive industry. Hence conversion of the existing metal components to composites is gaining momentum. Composite materials are much lighter than metals and offer many advantages such as fuel efficiency, corrosion resistance and improved life which has resulted in the increased usage of composite materials. Front under-run protection device (FUPD) is a protective device which is fitted on the front side of a truck which prevents the vehicle in front from under-running below the truck and also absorbs impact energy in case of a collision. This paper discusses the design, development and certification from ARAI of the lightweight composite front under-run protection device (FUPD). It has resulted in 33.33% weight reduction compared to the earlier metal component. The light-weight composite FUPD withstands loads of 80 kN and 160 kN as per the requirements of AIS-069. Also it has been physically tested and good co-relation has been successfully achieved between FE analysis and physical testing results. The composite FUPD complies to the regulations of AIS-069. The FE analysis and optimization is carried out using altair optistruct. The component is manufactured using the innovative infusion process. Infusion is a process where the voids in an evacuated stack of glass fibers are filled with a liquid resin. This design solution has resulted in light weight component with better durability and life. It also acts up to some extent as energy absorber.
The transportation industry is currently in a transition toward the use of zero-emission vehicles; however, reaching it will take a considerable amount of time. In the meantime, a diesel powertrain will remain the workhorse for most heavy-duty transportation. In order to reduce the engine’s environmental impact, biofuels, such as biodiesel, are used as drop-in fuels or fuel blends. The use of drop-in fuels may create challenges for the fuel system since sticky deposits can precipitate and cause injector malfunctioning or premature fuel filter plugging. It has been concluded in the past that these deposits have been caused by soft particles. In this article, soft particles created through the degradation of biodiesel and their effect on filters are studied. The article aims to analyze fuel filters and investigate the materials responsible for soft particle separation. The study includes three pre filters and three main filters that are commercially available truck filters. Different membrane types and membranes with different pore sizes were tested in order to comprehend their potential for fuel filtration. The tests were conducted using a custom-built fuel filter rig, where pressure buildup was measured online. The removal efficiency was assessed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and inductively coupled plasma (ICP). The materials of the filters were examined by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The analysis revealed novel results from the interaction of soft particles and different filter media. The filters show similar performance for the commercial fuel filters with respect to soft particle removal and pressure buildup and thus the tendency for fuel filter plugging, where the efficiency for total calcium ion removal was around 40% for pre-filters and 60% for main filters. The material analysis shows that the particles are most likely removed mainly by the cellulose layer of the filter paper, and filters with glass fiber showed higher capacity. In addition, the membrane filters prove to show good potential for soft particle removal, with the highest removal of 72%; however, their use in practice needs to be further evaluated in actual fuel systems.
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