Experimental Analysis of Effects of Ultrasonic Welding on Weld Strength of Polypropylene Composite Samples

In the present study, the ultrasonic welding process of plastics is used for overlap joining of polypropylene composites reinforced with glass fiber. The effect of three process parameters such as welding time, air pressure, vibration amplitude and the amount of glass fiber in the composite on tensile-shear strength of weld joints is investigated. To reduce the number of tests and cost, the response surface methodology of design of experiments is employed by considering the above four parameters at three levels. These parameters are also optimized to obtain maximum weld tensile-shear strength. The results showed that a maximum failure force of about 2.30 KN is obtained when air pressure, vibration amplitude, welding time and amount of glass fiber are 1.5bar, 32 microns, 0.4 seconds and 10 percent, respectively.