Modeling compression molding of all-thermoplastic honeycomb core sandwich components. Part B: Model verification

The compression molding process for manufacturing of all‐thermoplastic honeycomb core sandwich components is studied with the aim of verifying a previously proposed model describing the instantaneous face‐core bonding during molding. Experiments are performed with glass/polypropylene (PP) faces and PP honeycomb core and experimental data are compared to model predictions in terms of temperature and degree of face‐core interfacial contact with reasonable good agreement. Model predictions show that the face‐core interface bond strength may increase with up to 200% when molding at an interface temperature slightly above the crystal melting temperature of the matrix for only a few seconds. The influence of the major process parameters, including molding temperature, molding pressure and core viscosity, on the predicted bond strength is investigated using the model.