Diagnosis of injection-molded weld lines in ABS thermoplastic by polarized terahertz reflective imaging

Zhai, Min, Esam T. Ahmed Mohamed, Alexandre Locquet, G. Schneider, R. Kalmar, M. Fendler, N. F. Declercq, and D. S. Citrin. “Diagnosis of injection-molded weld lines in ABS thermoplastic by polarized terahertz reflective imaging.” NDT & E International (2021): 102497.

Abstract

We carry out a non destructive study of injection-mold weld lines in an acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) thermoplastic electrical receptacle plate. Terahertz techniques show morphological features at the weld lines and reveal terahertz birefringence properties localized about the welds, indicating frozen-in molecular orientation and stress proximate to the welds. Surface acoustic microscopy corroborates the morphological features at the welds shown by terahertz imaging and also reveals anomalous mechanical properties at the weld lines. These results indicate that THz-based techniques provide non destructive reliability assessment and quality control for injection-molded thermoplastic products.

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