Improved recyclability and cost pressure encourage the use of thermoplastics as electrical insulation material for demanding electrical applications. Besides their basic mechanical, thermal and electrical properties it is of interest to study the aging behavior of these thermoplastic materials. In this paper a non-standard test method is presented, where rod-rod shaped test samples have been exposed to electro-thermal stress. The samples have been aged at elevated temperature under alternating current (AC) field until breakdown occurred. Several thermoplastic materials were tested and differences in performance due to fillers and additives were investigated.

Presented work is focusing on numerical simulation of short glass fibers reinforced thermoplastic composites produced with injection molding technology. A combination of commercial software packages for: injection molding analysis (two leading systems), material modeling (Digimat) and structural analyses (Abaqus) enables computer simulations of mechanical behavior incorporating information on fibers distribution. Such approach allows prediction of mechanical response much closer to reality and with the use of failure indicators a critical load could be estimated. A series of tensile tests on injection molded samples were conducted in order to compare presented simulation approach with reality.

In this paper, the principles of the developed structural analysis approach for reactive moulding processes are rationalized and described. So far in the industry, the prediction of reactive moulding process induced problems that are directly related to the structural integrity of a finished product have largely been disregarded in the simulations. With the addition of the structural analysis method for reactive Moulding processes, the fully three-dimensional Simulation approach has been extended to cover all the process stages from mould filling, curing and post-casting heat treatment to final cooling down. The relevant physical phenomena, such as thermal and chemical deformations, that are affecting the structural integrity of analysed castings are taken into account. The utilization of the structural analysis approach to a medium voltage industrial application case along with selected results is presented later in the paper. The combined effects of numerous variables contributing to the casting process formulate the biggest challenge for reliable analysis results.