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We present in this paper a numerical simulation of the filling stage of injection molding process of thermoplastic composite reinforced with short fibers. We focused on analyzing the distribution of fiber’s orientation given by the variation of values of second-order orientation’s tensor in a rectangular geometry. The originality of our work is the introduction of a thermo-dependent law describing the behavior of material. This law is obtained experimentally using rheological measurements on online rheometer.

An experimental study of the thermorheological behavior of polypropylene (PP) reinforced with short glass fibers during the injection processing is described in this paper. This study was carried out using a proprietary rheometer which was designed and developed within our laboratory and is mounted on the injection machine. We have studied the variations of PP viscosity and elasticity, during isothermal flow, as a function of temperature, shear rate and glass fiber content. Furthermore we have studied the influence of the injection thermomechanical parameters during non-isothermal flowing and a pressure drop inside the feed channels and within a molding cavity of cylindrical cross section.