Development of a commodity item from common reed fibre-reinforced thermoplastics

Abstract

The applicability of common reed as a natural fibre reinforcement for polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE) polymers is highlighted through the development of a new multi-purpose container. The multi-purpose container is versatile; hence it can be used overa wide range of commodity applications. The product design follows the conventional design process guidelines, while the development includes injection moulding process parameter optimisation using plastic melt flow simulation, prototyping, and a product manufacturing. The optimised part design is used to conduct the cool, fill, pack and warp analyses during the melt flow simulation. The simulated process parameters that led to a good dimensional accuracy are used as baseline settings during the actual injection moulding process.