Plastic Welding - Design Considerations

[Radius1]

Hello All,

A couple questions on plastic welding. I'm interested in those with practical experience in the subject.

Is plastic welding suitable for structural applications? I think the most obvious concern is fatigue, as there is not well-defined endurance limit for plastics.

Are there any practical plastic welding resources available?

I keep finding scientific publications on the topic, which is good, but hardly practical. On the other hand, design for manufacturing books seem to be very general.

 

[BrianPetersen]

Vibration welding is a pretty common assembly process in the automotive industry but I've only seen it used for sticking parts together which individually had easy-to-mould shapes but which couldn't be moulded as one. I'm concerned about your use of the word "structural", though. What are you proposing to build like this??

 

[Radius1]

Thanks BrianPetersen,

A friend of mine asked my opinion of an RV that is thermo-composite.

https://www.livrvtrailers.com/

I realized that my knowledge of plastic welding was limited.

 

[BrianPetersen]

Worlds biggest website that takes longer to load the opening page than I have patience for. But, whatever ...

So this won't really be "structural". It's a big and relatively flimsy box bolted to the top of (probably - ran out of patience) a relatively normal steel-frame chassis underneath. It doesn't have to protect occupants - if you've ever seen the outcome of what happens when an RV trailer flips over on the motorway or gets hit by something, you'll understand. The box has to be just strong enough to support itself and to not leak rainwater (and in my observation, for not a whole lot longer than the warranty period). Shoddy construction is rampant in late model RV trailers.