Manufacturing Process Development of Advanced Composite Materials

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Guest Editor
School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford CM1 1SQ, UK
Interests: 3D/4D printing; additive/hybrid manufacturing; composite & hybrid materials; graphene processing; industry 4.0; metal & polymer prototyping; product design & development
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The product resulting from the combination of two or more materials to produce a unique product with distinctly different properties is referred to as a composite material. The importance of composites cannot be emphasised enough as they can provide bespoke properties and are being widely used in different industrial sectors (such as automotive, aerospace, marine, construction, electronics, defence, medical, railway, renewable energy, and sports) due to their high strength-to-weight ratio, durability, and design flexibility. Therefore, this Special Issue is focussed on such advanced composite materials and the processes that can help in their development in a cost-effective manner. Current methods of composite manufacture are mostly manual, with a heavy reliance on skilled humans and self-taught craftsmanship skills acquired through many years of experience. Furthermore, recent advancements of impregnating fibrous and/or particulate reinforcements in polymeric, metallic, and ceramic matrices require significance pre- and post-processing, thus increasing the lead time and associated costs as well as requiring specialised equipment for processing.

This Special Issue welcomes articles providing novel ideas to overcome these aspects through, for example, the design and embedding of fibrous/particulate materials, advances in fabrication and processing of composites, process modelling, and rigorous experimental analysis for the characterisation of composites and their constituent phases/interfaces. Other topics of interest include economic/commercial and environmental as well as recyclability pathways of composites and their manufacturing processes.

Dr. Javaid Butt
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • composites
  • process development
  • product design
  • manufacturing
  • mechanical testing
  • anisotropy
  • computational modelling

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 4484 KiB  
Article
Interrelations between Printing Patterns and Residual Stress in Fused Deposition Modelling for the 4D Printing of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene and Wood–Plastic Composites
by Yerong Huang, Sandra Löschke, Yixiang Gan and Gwénaëlle Proust
J. Manuf. Mater. Process. 2024, 8(2), 77; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmmp8020077 - 15 Apr 2024
Viewed by 1559
Abstract
Four dimensional printing enables the advanced manufacturing of smart objects that can morph and adapt shape over time in response to stimuli such as heat. This study presents a single-material 4D printing workflow which explores the residual stress and anisotropy arising from the [...] Read more.
Four dimensional printing enables the advanced manufacturing of smart objects that can morph and adapt shape over time in response to stimuli such as heat. This study presents a single-material 4D printing workflow which explores the residual stress and anisotropy arising from the fused deposition modelling (FDM) printing process to create heat-triggered self-morphing objects. In particular, the study first investigates the effect of printing patterns on the residual stress of FDM-printed acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) products. Through finite element analysis, the raster angle of printing patterns was identified as the key parameter influencing the distribution of residual stresses. Experimental investigations further reveal that the non-uniform distribution of residual stress results in the anisotropic thermal deformation of printed materials. Thus, through the design of printing patterns, FDM-printed materials can be programmed with desired built-in residual stresses and anisotropic behaviours for initiating and controlling the transformation of 4D-printed objects. Using the proposed approach, any desktop FDM printers can be turned into 4D printers to create smart objects that can self-morph into target geometries. A series of 4D printing prototypes manufactured from conventional ABS 3D printing feedstock are tested to illustrate the use and reliability of this new workflow. Additionally, the custom-made wood–plastic composite (WPC) feedstocks are explored in this study to demonstrate the transposability of the 4D printing approach. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Manufacturing Process Development of Advanced Composite Materials)
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20 pages, 11581 KiB  
Article
Assessing the Feasibility of Fabricating Thermoplastic Laminates from Unidirectional Tapes in Open Mold Environments
by Basit Ali, Khaled Kadri, Maen Alkhader, Wael Abuzaid, Mohammad A. Jaradat, Mohammed Mustafa and Mohamed Hassanien
J. Manuf. Mater. Process. 2024, 8(1), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmmp8010012 - 6 Jan 2024
Viewed by 2143
Abstract
The automation of the manufacturing processes of thermoplastic composite laminates has become dependent on open mold processes such as automated tape placement (ATP), which couples tape layering with in situ consolidation. The manufacturing parameters of ATP open mold processes, which comprise processing time, [...] Read more.
The automation of the manufacturing processes of thermoplastic composite laminates has become dependent on open mold processes such as automated tape placement (ATP), which couples tape layering with in situ consolidation. The manufacturing parameters of ATP open mold processes, which comprise processing time, consolidation pressure and temperature, affect the bond strength between the plies and the quality of the laminates produced. Therefore, the effect of the manufacturing parameters should be characterized. This work experimentally evaluates the feasibility of fabricating thermoplastic laminates using an open mold process that reasonably models that of ATP. Glass fiber-reinforced polypropylene laminates are fabricated from unidirectional tapes under different consolidation periods, pressures, and temperatures. The bond quality in the produced laminates is assessed by measuring their interlaminar shear strength, which is measured using a short beam standardized shear test in conjunction with digital image correlation. Results show that consolidation can occur at temperatures slightly below the composite tapes’ complete melting temperature, and consolidation times between 7 and 13 min can result in acceptable bond strengths. The results confirmed the feasibility of the process and highlighted its limitations. Analysis of variance and machine learning showed that the effect of process parameters on interlaminar shear strength is nonlinear. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Manufacturing Process Development of Advanced Composite Materials)
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23 pages, 5757 KiB  
Article
Investigation of Heat Annealing and Parametric Optimization for Drilling of Monel-400 Alloy
by Basem M. A. Abdo, Redhwan Almuzaiqer, Mohammed A. Noman and Sanjay Chintakindi
J. Manuf. Mater. Process. 2023, 7(5), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmmp7050170 - 15 Sep 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1769
Abstract
A nickel-based copper alloy known as Monel-400 is extensively applied in many industries including aerospace, marine engineering, and nuclear power generation, owing to its exceptional characteristics such as extreme tensile strength and toughness, excellent corrosion resistance, and the ability to retain shape even [...] Read more.
A nickel-based copper alloy known as Monel-400 is extensively applied in many industries including aerospace, marine engineering, and nuclear power generation, owing to its exceptional characteristics such as extreme tensile strength and toughness, excellent corrosion resistance, and the ability to retain shape even at extremely high temperatures. Traditional methods of drilling Monel-400 alloy are difficult due to quick tool wear and poor surface polishing, resulting in expensive machining costs. In this study, a technique called heat annealing was implemented to externally heat-treat the Monel-400 alloy material before the drilling process. Cutting force, surface roughness, and tool wear were used as the responses to investigate the effect of heat annealing and the drilling parameters on the machinability of Monel-400. The results revealed that the cutting force (Fz) and surface roughness (Ra and Rt) could be reduced by 33%, 31%, and 25%, respectively, after annealing at 700 °C compared to the results of the drilled Monel-400 at room temperature. It can be observed that the maximum improvement can reach 42% of Fz, 35% of Ra, and 59% of Rt while annealing Monel-400 at 1000 °C. A significant reduction was observed in the tool wear for machining the annealed material, which minimized the tooling and overall machining cost. Regarding the effects of the drilling process on the considered responses, the results revealed that the spindle speed has a greater effect on the cutting force, whereas the feed rate has the most significant effect on Ra. The significance of the drilling input parameters on the outputs is determined by analysis of the main effect plots and surface plots. Subsequently, the multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) is used to identify the optimal parametric conditions for minimizing the cutting force and surface roughness of the drilled holes. The optimized values achieved via multi-objective optimization are the cutting force, Fz = 388–466 N, and the surface roughness, Ra = 0.17–0.19 μm and Rt = 3–3.5 μm, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Manufacturing Process Development of Advanced Composite Materials)
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19 pages, 30296 KiB  
Article
New Input Factors for Machine Learning Approaches to Predict the Weld Quality of Ultrasonically Welded Thermoplastic Composite Materials
by Dominik Görick, Alfons Schuster, Lars Larsen, Jonas Welsch, Tobias Karrasch and Michael Kupke
J. Manuf. Mater. Process. 2023, 7(5), 154; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmmp7050154 - 23 Aug 2023
Viewed by 2046
Abstract
Thermoplastic composites (TCs) enjoy high popularity in the field of engineering. Due to this popularity, there is a growing need to assemble this material with the help of fast and efficient joining processes. One joining process, which has seen increased use, is the [...] Read more.
Thermoplastic composites (TCs) enjoy high popularity in the field of engineering. Due to this popularity, there is a growing need to assemble this material with the help of fast and efficient joining processes. One joining process, which has seen increased use, is the process of ultrasonic welding. To make reliable statements about the quality of the joined material, some kind of quality assurance has to be made. In terms of ultrasonic spot welding, there are already some documented approaches for observing or predicting the joining quality, but some of these most promising parameters for quality assurance are difficult to measure in the process of continuous ultrasonic welding. This is why new parameters are investigated for their potential to improve the prediction of ultrasonic-welded TCs’ quality. Thermography and sound emission data have been found to have a correlation with the produced weld quality and are fed into different machine learning algorithms. Despite the relatively small dataset, trained algorithms reach binary classification rates of over 90%, indicating that the newly discovered parameters show the potential to improve the quality assurance of ultrasonic-welded TCs in the future. This improvement may enable the establishment of the ultrasonic welding of TCs in manufacturing. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Manufacturing Process Development of Advanced Composite Materials)
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33 pages, 9530 KiB  
Article
Investigating the Properties of ABS-Based Plastic Composites Manufactured by Composite Plastic Manufacturing
by Raghunath Bhaskar, Javaid Butt and Hassan Shirvani
J. Manuf. Mater. Process. 2022, 6(6), 163; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmmp6060163 - 17 Dec 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4031
Abstract
Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies have revolutionized the manufacturing sector due to their benefits, such as design flexibility, ease of operation, and wide material selection. The use of AM in composites production has also become quite popular to leverage these benefits and produce products [...] Read more.
Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies have revolutionized the manufacturing sector due to their benefits, such as design flexibility, ease of operation, and wide material selection. The use of AM in composites production has also become quite popular to leverage these benefits and produce products with customized properties. In this context, thermoplastic materials are widely used in the development of plastic-based composites due to their affordability and availability. In this work, composite plastic manufacturing (CPM) has been used to manufacture plastic-based composites with bespoke properties in a cost- and time-effective manner. Various plastic-based composites have been manufactured using CPM by interlacing acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) with thermally activated materials. Three different thermally activated materials (graphene–carbon hybrid paste, heat cure epoxy, and graphene epoxy paste) have been used in this work to produce plastic-based composites. Thermally activated materials that are commercially available include graphene–carbon hybrid paste and heat cure epoxy. The graphene epoxy paste was a concoction made by incorporating three different weight percentages of graphene nanoplatelets (0.2 wt.%, 0.4 wt.%, and 0.6 wt.%) with heat cure epoxy. The composites were manufactured with multiple layers of thermally activated materials at different intervals to investigate their effect. The parts were manufactured and tested according to British and international standards. Experimental tests of mass, dimensions, ultrasonics, tensile strength, hardness, and flexural strength were conducted to evaluate the properties of composites manufactured by CPM. The parts manufactured by CPM showed superior mechanical properties compared to commercially available ABS. The increase was shown to be in the range of 8.1% to 33% for tensile strength, 17.8% to 30.2% for hardness, and 6.2% to 24.4% for flexural strength, based on the composite configurations. The results demonstrate that the CPM process can produce high-quality plastic composites and can be used to create products with customized properties in a time-effective manner. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Manufacturing Process Development of Advanced Composite Materials)
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