A Layered-Manufacturing Process For the Fabrication of Glass-Fiber-Reinforced Composites

Abstract

In this paper, we present a rapid manufacturing process for the layered fabrication of \npolymer-based composite parts using short discontinuous fibers as reinforcements. In the recent \npast, numerous research efforts, similar to ours, have been made to produce fiber-reinforced \nplastic parts via layered manufacturing methods. However, most of these attempts have not \nresulted in the development of an effective commercially-viable manufacturing process. Our \nproposed fabrication process on the other hand has been experimentally verified to yield \ncomposite parts comparable in quality to pure polymer parts manufactured on a commercial \nstereolithography system.