Fiber Orientation and Warpage of Film Insert Molded Parts with Glass Fiber Reinforced Substrate

Warpage of the film insert molded (FIM) part is caused by an asymmetric residual stress distribution. Asymmetric residual stress and temperature distribution is generated by the retarded heat transfer in the perpendicular direction to the attached film surface. Since warpage was not prevented by controlling injection molding conditions, glass fiber (GF) filled composites were employed as substrates for film insert molding to minimize the warpage. Distribution of short GFs was evaluated by using micro-CT equipment. Proper models for micro mechanics, anisotropic thermal expansion coefficients, and closure approximation should be selected in order to calculate fiber orientation tensor and warpage of the FIM part with the composite substrate. After six kinds of micro mechanics models, three models of the thermal expansion coefficient and five models of the closure approximation had been considered, the Mori-Tanaka model, the Rosen and Hashin model, and the third orthotropic closure approximation were selected in this study. The numerically predicted results on fiber orientation tensor and warpage were in good agreement with experimental results and effects of GF reinforcement on warpage of the FIM composite specimen were identified by the numerical results.