PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF RESISTANCE WELDED AND CO-CONSOLIDATED JOINTS IN CONTINUOUS FIBRE REINFORCED THERMOPLASTIC COMPOSITES

摘要

Welding is considered to be a technique ideally suited for joining thermoplastic composites (TPCs). From all the welding techniques currently applied to plastics, resistance welding is one of the few regarded as especially well suited for TPCs. It takes advantage of the heat generated at the welding interface by a resistive element, usually a metallic mesh, through which an electric current is sent. Examples of resistance welded parts with and embedded metallic mesh are the leading edge (J-nose) of the wing of the Airbus A340-500/600 and that of the Airbus A380.rnSome work has already been carried out in the recent years on the static and dynamic behaviour of this type of welds. Comparisons between different materials have been reported but further research is needed in order to contrast the performance of welded joints with other types of joints. Due to a similar morphology and to the fact that they are also used in current applications of thermoplastic composites for high-performance parts (e.g. the already mentioned J-nose) co-consolidated and resistance welded joints are compared in this study. Static, dynamic tests and fracture surfaces observation are used to assess the quality of the welds.