Infrared vs ultrasonic plastic welding

What this domain used to publish

A well documented issue with high strength composites is their poor resistance to shattering and "spalling" upon impact.

This can propel shards of high tensile strength material onto a race track, inside an aircraft, at the scene of a vehicle accident, on a hockey rink, or increase the risk of a catastrophic penetration in defense or aerospace.

Our tests indicate that adding a conventional epoxy-based high tenacity fiber reinforced composite layer to a carbon composite to enhance shatter resistance actually degrades the impact absorption of the structure.

As shown here, a composite part with the epoxy layer is easily penetrated.

Source notes for this comparison

Ultrasonic welding is very fast and applies heating and pressure in the same operation.

Conventional ultrasonic welding uses an ED having molded pyramids or holes (i.e., mesh).

Ultrasonic welding has been proposed with a “flat” ED, in other words, a resin film with no additional preparation [22] and no ED [23].

Agile Ultrasonics, in their work for TDEA, started with no ED and in later iterations used a flat ED.

NIAR recently reported data suggesting it is difficult to obtain high LSS with low COV without the use of a traditional ED [24].

Since the heat generation is due to friction, small differences in alignment, pressure distribution, and surface roughness (and flatness) play an obvious role in nonuniform heating.

These factors likely need to be controlled for successful weld operations.

ation and photograph of the welding fixture at Spirit Aerosystems is provided in Figure 3.

Process Development: Ultrasonic Welding Ultrasonic welding uses high power ultrasonic frequencies to induce frictional heating.

The implementation of UW used in this work followed two unconventional practices in preparation for scaling the process to large area welds.

First, despite the relatively small target weld area, the sonotrode was translated across the part; referred to herein as a scan weld.

Second, the welds were performed without using an energy director.

What this page is and is not

This review is for analysis teams. Confirm units and conditions in the cited file before you reuse a value.

Nothing on this page is a quote sheet. It does not publish catalog prices or a SKU dump.

Process comparison for IR vs ultrasonic, identity stays IR welding. Verify every figure against the original report before a drawing release.

The library hits for this heading were: NASA TM TDEA thermoplastic composite welding; NASA TM thermoplastic joining resistance induction ultrasonic; Finite Element Thermal Model for Ultrasonic Welding of Thermoplastic Composites; Manufacture, Characterization, and Fusion Welding of Thermoplastic Composites for Space Applications; Innovations in Continuous Ultrasonic Welding of Thermoplastic Composites and Evaluation for Space Applications; NASA TM TDEA thermoplastic composite welding.