Research on development of liquid composite molding parts: Situation and framework

Abstract

Low weight and good mechanical performance make composite plastics the potential material of choice for a plethora of applications. Increasingly, liquid composite molding (LCM) is being applied as a means for industrialized production. While technological basics of composite design and manufacture seem to be sufficiently well understood, it is not clear why LCM part development often fails to fully exploit the material’s potentials or leads to poor manufacturability of the parts. To shed more light on this question, we conducted case studies in the course of 25 interviews with members of LCM development teams. We propose that the context of exploration of LCM technology strongly influences the project variables, development strategy, procedure of development tasks and manufacturability. On one hand, the resulting project variables severely limit the scope for fiber-fair design; on the other hand, development strategies and procedures are mainly based on a product-oriented approach.