Innovative hybrid products for technologically demanding applications in the automotive industry are manufactured from a wide range of material combinations whose properties enable optimal solutions and compliance with increasingly stringent requirements.
One of these requirements is the tightness of a product when exposed to various media before and after thermal shock in accordance with a prescribed test. A prerequisite for achieving the tightness criteria is good adhesion between the same or different materials. Using injection molding technology, we produced customer-specific master samples as well as a series product and investigated the adhesion between a thermoplastic composite based on a PPS matrix and a thermoset composite based on an epoxy matrix. The adhesion between the aforementioned materials was analyzed by leak detection methods (leak test when immersed in water and bubble detection and leak test with He mass spectrometer), porosity analysis (CT analysis) and surface analysis (SEM / EDS analysis and XPS analysis). Due to the non-optimal geometry of the master sample and the inadequate gating system, we were unable to establish a strong bond, but we were able to confirm the adhesion between the two materials. For a series product, for which the injection molding process had been optimized on the basis of simulations, a technically strong bond was obtained before and after exposure to thermal shock.
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