Tobias Karl

• Master of Science
• Scientific Employee at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

The anisotropic elastic properties of injection molded composites are fundamentally coupled to the flow of the fiber suspension during mold-filling. Regarding the modeling of mold-filling processes, both a decoupled and a flow–fiber coupled approach are possible. In the latter, the fiber-induced viscous anisotropy is considered in the computation o...

Mean-field homogenization is an established and computationally efficient method estimating the effective linear elastic behavior of composites. In view of short-fiber reinforced materials, it is important to homogenize consistently during process simulation. This paper aims to comprehensively reflect and expand the basics of mean-field homogenizat...

Anisotropic fiber-reinforced composites are used in lightweight construction, which is of great industrial relevance. During mold filling of fiber suspensions, the microstructural evolution of the local fiber arrangement and orientation distribution is determined by the local velocity gradient. Based on the Folgar–Tucker equation, which describes t...

The present work discusses the impact of the back coupling of the fiber orientation distribution on the base flow and on the fiber orientation itself during mold filling simulations. Flows through a channel and over a backward-facing step are investigated. Different closure approximations are considered for modeling the flow-induced evolution of an...