Abstract
The fiber orientation in molded plastics is caused by the flow in the manufacturing process. An investigation has been made of the influence of parameters such as fiber length, volume fraction and viscosity of carrier medium on the decree of fiber orientation.
The object of this work is to determine the degree of the orientation of short fibers contained in the polymer solution during the flow through parallel slits. Furthermore, the fiber orientation in converging and diverging flows is investigated. The distributions of fiber orientation at various parts of parallel slits are found to be the normal distribution, whose standard deviation is obtained as a function of shear rate. The convergent flow results in high fiber align ment along streamline. On the other hand, the divergent flow caused some fibers parallel to the streamline and perpendicular to the streamline.
