A coupler has been developed to prevent windshield wiper systems from being damaged by excessive loads that can occur when the normal wiping pattern is restricted. The coupler is composed of a thermoset polyester/glass fiber pultruded composite rod with injection-molded plastic spherical joints attached at either end. The sockets are used to attach the coupler to the crank and rocker of the windshield wiper linkage. This paper details the methodology that was employed to produce and optimize an acceptable means to attach the injection-molded sockets to the pultruded rods. Specifically, a designed experiment based on the Robust Design Strategy of Dr. G. Taguchi was used to identify the process, processing parameters, and materials that yield a sufficiently strong joint at a reasonable manufacturing cost without damaging the integrity of the underlying composite structure. Based the aforementioned testing, and considering cost and quality control, the results of the investigation reveal that when machining grooves into the pultrusions, grinding is superior to cutting. Grooves should be on the faces of the pultrusion having the greatest surface area (e.g. the top and bottom in the present case). Offsetting the grooves enhances resistance to delamination. Numerous fine grooves are superior to few coarse grooves. Adhesives can be used to significantly improve joint strength, but are noted to be difficult to process since they are very time-sensitive and difficult to control. The final, optimized design of the socket-to-pultrusion joint is depicted


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    Title :

    Use of a designed experiment to determine the optimal method to join injection-molded parts to pultrusions


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2006


    Size :

    8 Seiten, 9 Bilder, 4 Tabellen, 7 Quellen




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English






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