Microcellular injection molding of polypropylene and glass fiber composites with supercritical nitrogen

Abstract

Microcellular injection molding of polypropylene and glass fiber composites (PP-1684/GF-950) was performed using supercritical nitrogen as the physical blowing agent. Based on design of experiment matrices, the influences of glass fiber content and operating conditions on cell structure, glass fiber orientation and mechanical properties of molded samples were studied systematically. The results showed the cell morphology and glass fiber orientation of foaming parts were definitely influenced by the cooling and shear effects. The mechanical properties of foamed polypropylene–glass fiber composites could be effectively enhanced by improving the cell morphology, dispersion state and orientation of the glass fiber at optimal weight percentage ${\text{w}}_{\text{GF}}/{\text{w}}_{\text{PP}}=11.8\%$ . And the optimal conditions for injection molding were obtained by analyzing the signal-to-noise ratio analysis of the mechanical properties of the molded samples, which were a shot size of 36 mm, a supercritical N₂ weight percentage of 0.4%, an injection speed of 60%, a melt temperature of 190℃ and a mold temperature of 70℃. The molded specimens of polypropylene–glass fiber composites, produced under those optimal conditions, exhibited very uniform fiber dispersion and microcellular structures with an average cell size less than 30 µm. And the mechanical properties normalized by weight ratio of the microcellular samples were increased significantly, especially the impact strength.