Bending behaviour of thermoplastic composites in melt: A data-driven approach

The resistance to bending of continuous fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composites at processing temperature is an important predictor of wrinkle formation during the stamp forming process. This resistance can be quantified with experiments and approximated with models. However, current models are validated with one, or at most two, thermoplastic composites. Hence, it is not known whether these models generalise to other thermoplastic composites. This data-driven study proposes a rate- and temperature-dependent bending model derived from the experimental data of 10 very different thermoplastic composites. The multivariate data structure was analysed with a Tucker decomposition, together with bootstrapping and cross-validation, to reveal the important generalisable trends, and discard irrelevant features. The most suitable Tucker model could be parametrised to yield a four-parameter model, which approximates the deformation, rate, and temperature dependence, respectively using a linear, a power law, and an Arrhenius-type relation. The four-parameter model was validated with experimental data from four other thermoplastic composite materials. It can describe the measured rate- and temperature-dependent bending behaviour of a wide range of thermoplastic composites.