Blow-Moulded Mandrels for the Production of One-Piece Hollow Profiles with Undercuts

Abstract

The choice of material, manufacturing process, and molding tool significantly impacts the quality, environmental impact, and cost efficiency of composite components for lightweight structures. Producing one-piece hollow profiles with smooth inner surfaces and undercuts presents major challenges for conventional mold concepts. Blow-molded mandrels could effectively address these challenges. Stretched polymers can resume a stored shape through thermal activation, allowing for the demolding of one-piece internal tools with undercuts. The presented research provides an overview of research on shape memory polymers used in tooling applications for composite manufacturing. Furthermore, suitable polymers for blow-molded mandrels are outlined. The shape memory properties and the demolding behavior of these materials determined by coupon tests are presented. By exploring the use of shape memory polymers and recyclable stretched polymers, this research is contributing to the development of more efficient and environmentally-friendly manufacturing processes for lightweight composite components.