Fusion bonding of carbon fabric reinforced polyphenylene sulphide

Abstract

In recent years, there is a growing interest in joining techniques for thermoplastic composites as an alternative to adhesive bonding. In this manuscript, a fusion bonding process called hot-tool welding is investigated for this purpose and the used material is a carbon fabric reinforced polyphenylene sulphide. The quality of the welds is experimentally assessed using a short three-point bending setup, which has an interesting distribution of interlaminar shear stresses. It can be concluded that although the hot-tool welding process shows high short-beam strengths, it has some drawbacks. Therefore, a design of an infrared welding setup is presented.