Glass fiber reinforced plastics are made by adding glass fiber and other additives to the original pure plastic to increase the range of material applications. Generally speaking, most glass fiber reinforced materials are used in the structural parts of products and are a type of structural engineering material; such as PP, ABS, PA66, PA6, PC, POM, PPO, PET, PBT, and PPS.
Advantages:
- After glass fiber reinforcement, glass fiber is a high temperature resistant material. Therefore, the heat resistance temperature of reinforced plastics is much higher than that before adding glass fiber, especially nylon plastics;
- After glass fiber reinforcement, the addition of glass fiber limits the mutual movement between the polymer chains of the plastic. Therefore, the shrinkage rate of the reinforced plastic is greatly reduced and the rigidity is greatly improved;
- After glass fiber reinforcement, reinforced plastics will not stress crack, and at the same time, the impact resistance of plastics is greatly improved;
- After glass fiber reinforcement, glass fiber is a high-strength material, which greatly improves the strength of plastics, such as tensile strength, compressive strength, and bending strength;
- After glass fiber reinforcement, due to the addition of glass fiber and other additives, the combustion performance of reinforced plastics decreases a lot. Most materials cannot be ignited and are flame retardant materials.
Shortcomings:
- After glass fiber reinforcement, due to the addition of glass fiber, the transparent material before adding glass fiber will become opaque;
- After glass fiber reinforcement, the toughness of all plastics decreases and the brittleness increases;
- After glass fiber reinforcement, due to the addition of glass fiber, the melt viscosity of all materials increases, the fluidity becomes worse, and the injection pressure increases a lot compared to without adding glass fiber;
- After glass fiber reinforcement, due to the addition of glass fiber, the fluidity is poor. In order to ensure normal injection molding, the injection temperature of all reinforced plastics must be increased by 10℃-30℃ compared to before adding glass fiber;
- After glass fiber reinforcement, due to the addition of glass fiber and additives, the moisture absorption performance of the reinforced plastic is greatly enhanced. The original pure plastic that does not absorb water will become water-absorbing. Therefore, it must be dried during injection molding.
