Pultrusion is the one of technologies to fabricate the polymer composites to be used in many industries such as in aerospace, automotive and construction industries. The high performance pultruded products that are produced by this technique offer high fibre content of at least 70%. In order to produce high quality pultruded profiles, there are variables such as fibre impregnation, resin viscosity, pulling speed and curing temperature that have to be considered and these variables are discussed in this study. The review on the recent research in pultrusion process, types of resins used in pultrusion process and mechanical properties of pultuded composites are presented.

Pultrusion is one of the polymer composite fabrication processes employing a combination of pulling and extrusion processes. The composite profiles are obtained by pulling resin-impregnated fibres through a series of heated dies. The ability of the pultrusion technique to support a high volume of fibre fraction produces the high stiffness of the composite profile. There are many parameters such as filler loading, mould temperature and pulling speed to be considered and controlled during the pultrusion process. In this paper, an investigation of the effect of the filler loading on the tensile and flexural properties of the pultruded kenaf reinforced vinyl ester composites is presented. As the filler loadings were increased to a significant amount, the mechanical properties started to drop, which was attributed to the increase of viscosity in the matrix and in turn the increase in porosity and decrease in the wettability of the composites. Hence, increasing the amount of filler loading increased the tensile and flexural properties of the pultruded composites in terms of strength and stiffness. The tensile properties of the composites had increased by up to 50% of fibre loading. The maximum flexural strength and modulus were obtained at 30 and 50% of filler loadings respectively. The maximum compressive strength was observed to take place at 40% of filler loading.

In pultrusion process, one of the major decisions to be made by the manufacturing engineer is about the setting of manufacturing process parameters such as pulling speed, gelation temperature, curing temperature and CaCo3 filler loading before the manufacturing process is commenced. The objective of this paper is to report on the optimization of the manufacturing process parameters during pultrusion process of kenaf fibre reinforced vinyl ester composites. Besides, the paper reveals the best combination parameter and the most contributed parameter in process of pultruded kenaf reinforced vinyl ester composite through analysis of variance (ANOVA).

In new era in marine industries especially in fibreglass boat construction, a proper material need to be consider for the product perfomance and economical. This paper ilustrate how the selection has been perform to select most suitable material for related body and structure component of fibreglass boat. Expert System has been using as a tool of selection and polymeric based material reinforced with different composition of fibreglass as candidate material. Ranking system has been implemented according to various factors to reveal the best polymeric based material composite for each fibreglass boat component.

During the pultrusion process, there are some parameters that influence the mechanical performance of pultruded composites. The pultruded kenaf composites processing parameter such as pulling speed influenced the pressure and curing behavior of the pultruded composites. The optimal pulling speed leads to the sufficient pressure and temperature and facilitated curing the pultruded composites. Mechanical properties such as tensile strength and modulus, flexural strength and modulus, and compressive strength of kenaf pultruded composites were analyzed in this study and the optimal pulling speed of pultruded composites was determined. The tensile strength and tensile modulus showed the optimal pulling speeds at 0.3 and 0.1 m/min, respectively, while, flexural strength, flexural modulus, and compressive strength were at 0.4, 0.2, and 0.3 m/min, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy images were utilized to study the effect of pulling speed on the morphology of the tensile fracture sample. Fiber wetting, fiber matrix adhesion, the gaps within the samples, and fiber breakages were among the phenomena occurring in the composites. J. VINYL ADDIT. TECHNOL., 24:E13–E20, 2018. © 2016 Society of Plastics Engineers