Experimental and numerical investigations on the mechanical properties of overmolded hybrid fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites

Abstract In this work, an anti-collision beam was manufactured through a thermoplastic composite overmolding (TCO) process. This process includes thermoforming of continuous glass fiber reinforced thermoplastic composite (CGFR-PP) and overmolding of short glass fiber reinforced thermoplastic composite (SGFR-PP). Double cantilever beam (DCB) and end-notched flexure (ENF) tests were performed to obtain the interfacial bonding fracture toughness between CGFR-PP and SGFR-PP, which was then used to establish a cohesive zone model (CZM). A continuum damage model (CDM) based on Tsai-Wu criterion was established to simulate the damage behavior of CGFR-PP. Tensile and bending tests on CGFR-PP and single lap shear (SLS) tests were conducted to verify the validity of the CDM and CZM. At last, the finite element model was used to predict the bending properties of the anti-collision beam, and the error of maximum load is approximately 5 %. Results reveal that the simulation results demonstrated a good agreement with the experimentally obtained force-displacement curves in terms of stiffness and maximum load.