Forecast And Analysis Of Development Of Long Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastics Industry In The Next 5 Years

Glass fiber is an inorganic nonmetallic material with excellent properties. It is made of glass or waste glass as raw material by high temperature melting, drawing, winding and weaving. The diameter of monofilament is from several microns to 20 microns, which is equivalent to 1/20-1/5 of a hair. Each strand of fibril is made up of hundreds or even thousands of monofilaments.

Glass fiber has the advantages of high mechanical strength, high impact energy absorption, strong heat resistance and good corrosion resistance. It is usually used as reinforcing material in composite materials.

Glass fiber reinforced plastics (Glass-FiberReinforcedPlastics) refers to glass fiber reinforced unsaturated polyester resin (or epoxy resin, phenolic resin) as the matrix composite, referred to as GRP.

Glass fiber reinforced composites have greatly improved in heat resistance, rigidity, impact resistance, heat resistance and so on.

Because fiberglass reinforced plastics have the same strength as steel, they also contain glass fiber and have the properties of glass, such as color, shape, corrosion resistance, electrical insulation and heat insulation. Therefore, it is commonly known as "FRP" in our country.

Glass fiber reinforced plastics are widely used in automobile, building, electronic and electrical fields because of their light weight and high strength. In the automotive industry, glass fiber reinforced plastics have gradually replaced metal materials to achieve lightweight vehicles.

Glass fiber reinforced plastics are mainly divided into thermoplastic and thermosetting, and are divided into long glass fiber and short glass fiber.

Glass fiber reinforced plastics can be divided into thermoplastic and thermosetting reinforced plastics according to their processability. Usually plastics are solid or elastomers at room temperature. In order to be able to process and shape them, plastics are usually heated to make plastic become viscous flow states with fluidity, so that they can be processed and molded.

The heating and softening of thermoplastics (LFT, etc.) are physical, reversible and reversible.

Thermosetting plastics (SMC, etc.) undergo chemical changes during heating and curing. The hinge forms inside the chain to stabilize the shape. After hardening, the inner structure will be destroyed by reheating, so it can not be processed again by heating.

Compared with thermosetting plastics, thermoplastics have many advantages:

Thermoplastics are recyclable and environmentally friendly: Thermoplastics can be repeatedly heated, replasticized and reprocessed, so their plastic products can be recycled repeatedly, while thermosetting plastic products can not be recycled.

The density of thermoplastics is lower, the products are thinner, and the weight effect is better. The average density of thermosetting plastics is about 1.7g/cm3, while the thermoplastics are only about 1.1g/cm3, and thermoplastic materials can use very thin wall sections. Under normal circumstances, 0.4mm is not possible for thermosetting insulation materials, and their wall thickness is generally limited to 1.5mm.

Thermoplastics parts are of higher efficiency: the injection process of thermoplastic parts is a rapid processing process, which is very suitable for mass production.

And thermoplastic parts after the mold almost finished the size of the finished parts, and thermosetting plastics usually need to add burrs or machining processes, in order to get the parts that can be used.

Raw material utilization rate is high: thermoplastic parts have high material utilization rate, generally up to 95%, thermosetting plastics in injection molding, the general material utilization rate is 85%.

Injection molding of thermoplastic materials usually produces little or no burr and reduces material waste.

In terms of production cost, although the cost of thermoplastics will be higher than that of the corresponding thermosetting materials, high productivity, high material utilization and recyclability make the cost of production similar to that of thermosetting plastics.

According to the length of the plastic particles and the length of the glass fiber, there are short glass fiber reinforced plastics and long glass fiber reinforced plastics. The length of the short glass fiber reinforced plastics is 2-4mm, the length of the glass fiber is 0.2-0.4mm, and the length of the long glass fiber reinforced plastic particles and the glass fiber can reach 6-25mm.

Because of the longer glass fiber reinforced plastic and longer regular arrangement, the glass fiber reinforced plastics have stronger rigidity, specific strength, creep resistance, fatigue resistance and stability.

Long glass fiber thermoplastic is the development direction of automotive applications: as the automotive industry has high requirements for the strength of materials, most of them are long glass fiber reinforced plastics, especially automotive structural parts, of which thermoplastic and thermosetting plastics are widely used.

Considering the characteristics of recyclable, lighter and thinner thermoplastic glass fiber reinforced plastics, it will become the development direction of glass fiber reinforced plastics in the automotive industry in the future.

The long glass fiber reinforced plastic industry chain is mainly divided into: upstream raw material production and equipment supply, including long glass fiber, resin, auxiliaries production, granulation, molding equipment supply, etc. the long glass fiber reinforced plastic manufacturing in the middle reaches can be divided into SMC, GMT and other glass fiber reinforced plastics production according to raw materials, technology and so on. Downstream is the specific application field of long glass fiber reinforced plastics, mainly used in automobile, building and electronic and electrical fields, including automotive and construction applications accounted for about 15% of the total application, and electrical and electronic applications account for about about 1/3.

Long glass reinforced plastics industry chain

The long glass fiber reinforced plastics used in the automobile industry mainly include SMC, GMT and LFT. They are widely used in the manufacture of front-end modules, chassis, sound insulation cover, dashboard and other parts, especially the European and American auto manufacturers. Their technology and application are very mature.

With the gradual improvement of technology, domestic automobile manufacturers are also promoting the application of long glass fiber reinforced plastics in domestic automobile production.

Overall, it is still in its infancy, and has huge room for development compared with mature markets abroad.

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Long glass fiber reinforced plastics are featured by lightweight, modularity and low cost.

Light weight and no sacrifice strength: long glass fiber reinforced material is light and high strength, can effectively replace metal material to reduce body weight, while strength can be higher than metal material, collision is not easy to produce dent, and can be designed to achieve strength in a particular direction.

Modularization: the long glass fiber reinforced plastic has good formability to bring higher design freedom, so that long glass fiber reinforced plastic parts can expand to large and modular parts with complex structure and function integration, greatly reduce the number of components and quantities needed to assemble, improve the assembly efficiency, and maintain maintenance more simply.

Low cost: modular design greatly reduces the number of mold and related costs. Taking the rear door of ordinary automobile as an example, the use of metal material processing needs to make 10 sets of dies, which cost 4 million yuan, while using SMC material processing only needs to make three sets of moulds, which cost 1 million 200 thousand yuan, and greatly reduce the assembly cost.

According to the estimation of French INPOAST company, the production cost of SMC FRP is lower than that of metal stamping process at that time when the output is less than 150 thousand sets, while the output of more than half of SMC parts production companies in North America is less than 100 thousand sets / year.

Outstanding design flexibility: enhanced plastic in the mold can flow to a very deep cavity, get difficult to achieve metal stamping curve and other complex shape, and because of the lower cost of mold, product platform upgrade will bring about changes in the shape of products will become very easy.

Corrosion resistance: metals are susceptible to corrosion by moisture and salt in air, and glass fiber reinforced.

It has strong corrosion resistance.