Considering the Local Anisotropy of Short Fibre Reinforced Plastics: Validation on Specimen and Component

Finding the optimal design of plastic components using FEM tools has become an increasingly important topic for companies and research institutions. However, typical simulation models neglect the local anisotropy of injection moulded plastic components and often fail to predict the correct mechanical behaviour and failure mode. Using an integrative simulation approach, the manufacturing process and the resulting local anisotropies can be incorporated in a structural finite-element model which significantly enhances the predictive quality of the model. This is especially the case for glass-fibre reinforced polymers, where the difference between the mechanical behaviour longitudinal and lateral to the fibre is high. This also concerns the strength of weld lines, which are often inevitable in injectionmoulded parts. Fibre orientation needs to be considered because it is indispensable for understanding weaknesses of a polymer part design. Injection-moulding simulation is already a common tool for process simulation and allows calculating the fibre orientation. For structural analyses, various anisotropic material models have been developed or improved in the last years and interfaces to transfer the orientation become more and more available. This now allows making the step to integrative simulation also on an industrial level. The anisotropic material model, used in this study is *MAT_4a_MICROMEC, a micromechanics model based on the Mori-Tanaka Meanfield Homogenization [1]. In this study, the experience of implementing an integrative simulation approach is presented. Furthermore, the fibre orientation determined by mouldflow simulation and the prediction of mechanical behaviour on specimen and component level are validated.