Squeezing Flow of Fibre-Reinforced Viscoelastic Composites

Abstract

The flow of a fibre-reinforced material when squeezed between two rigid platens whilst held at an elevated temperature has been analysed by Rogers [6] using an ideal linear viscous fluid model. Although this model provides useful insight into flow behaviour, experiments performed by Balasubramanyam et al. [2] and more recently by Mander et al. [5] on thermoplastic composites suggest a more complex model is required. Hence, a non-linear viscoelastic constitutive equation is presented and subsequently used to derive a squeeze flow solution. The concept of an ‘ideal’ material is retained so that the fibres are assumed to be inextensible and continuously distributed throughout an incompressible resin.