Transverse squeeze flow of fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites

Transverse squeeze flow is one of the deformation mechanisms that govern the forming of molten fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites. It is typically described by a transverse bulk viscosity, dictating the resistance against the flow of the combined constituents. In this work, the squeeze flow method was used to characterize the transverse viscosity of carbon fiber reinforced low-melting PAEK at three different compression rates. The experiments were recorded with a camera and the video images were analyzed to obtain the flow fields. A power law fluid model was fitted to the logged data, but found to be unable to describe the material behavior at all compression rates. Moreover, the video analyses indicated discrepancies between the observed specimen deformations and those predicted by the model. Future studies need to focus on the description of the squeeze flow behavior of UD C/LM-PAEK by different models (viscous, viscoelastic), using video-captured deformations for numerical fitting of the models.