It is a well-known fact that weldlines are unavoidable in most injection-molded products of even moderate complexity. While there are many situations where they are barely perceptible, weldlines represent a potential source of weakness in molded parts. In injection molding weldlines are generated when two separate melt streams join either in multigated molds or as a consequence of flow around obstacles. The development of many interesting materials has been hampered by poor weldline strength. Among such materials are plastics reinforced with fibers or platelets, liquid crystal polymers, and a number of multiphase polymer blends. Weldlines have ever been called the "Achilles' heel" of these multiphase materials. This article is a review of the literature published on weldlines in injected parts. It deals primarily with the aspects related to the mechanical behavior of weldline-containing parts. It begins with a brief description of the phenomena important for the part formation in the mold, including those leading to weldlines, in addition to the techniques used to characterize weldline-containing parts. The following three sections consider the structure and properties of weldlines in neat amorphous and semicrystalline polymers, filled and reinforced plastics, and finally in polymer blends and alloys. In the last section methods developed for increasing the weldline strength are discussed.

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Weldlines are inescapable byproducts of the injection molding process. They represent potentially fatal flaws particularly in multiphase materials. In this work weldlines in injection molded glass fiber-reinforced polypropylene (0 to 40wt%) were studied as a function of the cavity shapes and depths. It was found that the weldline is a zone between 2 and 8 mm wide extending throughout the thickness in which the fibers are oriented almost perfectly in a plane parallel to the weldline. While the strength of moldings without weldlines depends on the mold shape and on the fiber concentration, the weldline strength is a function of fiber content only. A simple model based on the assumption of complete debonding of the fiber-matrix interface when failure occurs can be used to predict the strength loss in the weldline.

The objective was to study the fiber length degradation during compounding of glass fiber with polypropylene. The effect of parameters such as viscosity, total work, concentration on fiber length and dispersion was studied using an automatic particle size analyzer. The length degradation is most severe during the very first stage of the process, i.e., when fiber bundles are being filamentized. The mode of glass fiber incorporation into the melt (fiber addition to the molten resin versus to polypropylene powder prior to compounding) was found to have no effect on the final fiber length. Matrix resin viscosity affects the fiber length significantly. Concentration dependencies of fiber length for different times of compounding suggest that the degradation results from both fiber‐fiber and fiber‐melt interactions.

Presence of weldlines introduces an element of uncertainty to the performance of injection molded parts. Weldlines are particularly problematic in reinforced plastics because, unlike molecular orientation in neat polymers, the flow induced fiber orientation does not relax. This paper deals with the structure and mechanical behavior of weldlines in glass fiber reinforced nylon 66, a plastic known for excellent fiber‐matrix adhesion. Two molds were used to generate weldlines: a double gated tensile sample shaped cavity in which the weldline is formed by a head‐on collision of melt fronts flowing in opposite directions and a film gated rectangular plaque with a circular insert in which the weldline formation behind the insert is followed by additional flow. In both cases the weldline zone is several millimetres wide: in the plane where the melts fronts have met fibers are oriented parallel to this plane (random‐in‐plane in the double‐gated cavity and unidirectional in the cavity with insert). The transition zone between the weldline plane and the rest of the sample is characterized by an increased presence of microvoids. Weldline tensile depends little on the fiber concentration and on the sample shape or thickness: values close to the matrix strength are found: in samples without weldlines strength increases with the fiber content. However, in instrumented impact penetration test during which the material is subjected to multiaxial loading, the weldline effect appears negligible.