Attainment of a High Fiber Content in Centrifugal Forming of FRP Pipes

The centrifugal method of a fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) pipe has been developed owing to the simple processing in the cylindrical forming, and the technique of mass-production has been established. At the next step, the improvement of the quality has been closed up and the study to enhance the fiber content has been considered to be of importance.On the centrifugal method, only the centrifugal force is applied on fibers and other mechanical forces are not applied at the lamination process. Therefore, the high fiber content has been seemed to be difficult.[6]-[8]In this report, an experiment have been made on the effective centrifugal forming for the high fiber content by applying the forming behavior of fibers. As a result, a high fiber content of approximate 55 vol.% was achieved, although it was hitherto only 25 vol.% at its maximum.