Effect of fiber entanglement in chopped glass fiber reinforced composite manufactured via long fiber spray-up molding

Long Fiber Spray-up Molding (LFSM) deviates from the conventional approach in liquid composite molding (LCM) processes by utilizing extremely long chopped strands of fibers as the primary reinforcement material in its fabrication process. In LFSM, chopped fibers are impregnated with resin that is sprayed vertically downwards before reaching the mold surface. The spraying mechanism is mounted on an actuator, which is capable of spraying freely in any specified pattern or direction. Under LFSM, it is extremely difficult to fabricate a composite part with uniformly distributed fiber content throughout its volume. The consequences of the nonuniform fiber volume distribution arise from the fiber entanglement as the length of the fiber reaches up to 100 mm in LFSM. In this study, the effect of fiber entanglement during LFSM was analyzed through various approaches. This included measuring the coefficient of friction between fibers in contact and examining the correlation between fiber lengths and the number of intersections. Furthermore, the viscoelastic properties of the uncured composite part were assessed by experimenting with the influence of viscosity on fiber length during compression molding. The results were then computed, modeled, and visualized in MATLAB, considering variations in viscosity and fiber length, both before and after compression molding.