Assessment of Long Fiber Spray-up Molding of Chopped Glass Fiber Reinforced Polydicyclopentadiene Composites

Chopped strands of glass fiber reinforced polymerized dicyclopentadiene (p-DCPD) was manufactured and mechanical properties were assessed. For the purpose, a lab-scale long fiber spray-up molding apparatus had been designed and built. Polydicyclopentadiene (p-DCPD) is a crosslinking polymer with a very rigid network structure resulting excellent mechanical and corrosion resistant properties. In this research, the length of the glass fiber roving was cut such that it would be 100 times its critical length. Uniformity of the fiber volume distribution was examined by varying the spray height, glass fiber weight percentage and the fiber length. Mechanical properties were measured for each processing conditions. It was found that tensile strengths of the specimen fabricated with 50 mm glass fiber were higher over the shorter (25 mm) fiber only if sufficient spray height was achieved. It is definitely desirable to use long strands of chopped glass fibers for composite fabrication processes however; a careful manufacturing precaution is required since the effect of the adhesion force between long fibers from the fiber entanglement cannot be ignored.