Original Article

Journal of Thermoplastic Composite

Materials
Filament winding of 2018, Vol. 31(4) 465–482
ª The Author(s) 2017
aramid/PA6 commingled Reprints and permissions:
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yarns with in situ DOI: 10.1177/0892705717706528

journals.sagepub.com/home/jtc

consolidation
Joanna CH Wong, Javier Molina Blanco and Paolo Ermanni

Abstract
The in situ consolidation of commingled yarns during filament winding is demonstrated
on an aramid fibre-reinforced polyamide 6 material. This article is a systematic
experimental investigation of the filament winding processing parameters, namely, the
heat gun temperature, line speed, fibre tension, compaction force and preheater
temperature. Optimizing the processing parameters in this filament winding process
produced a fully consolidated material with a void content of *0.25% which is com-
parable to the material quality achieved by means of compression moulding using the
same intermediate materials.

Keywords
Filament winding, commingled yarns, in situ consolidation

Introduction
Filament winding is a process widely used to manufacture hollow constructions,
for example, pipes,1 pressure vessels2,3 and aircraft structures,4 from continuous fibre-
reinforced plastic composite materials. The process generally involves winding endless
reinforcement fibres and matrix material around a rotating mandrel along programmed
orientations determined according to the load cases expected during operation.5 Origi-
nally, filament winding was developed for composite materials based on thermosetting
resins due to their low viscosity and processability, but the process has also been
demonstrated for thermoplastic composites by direct melt impregnation,6,7 and, more

Laboratory of Composite Materials and Adaptive Structures, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Corresponding author:
Joanna CH Wong, Laboratory of Composite Materials and Adaptive Structures, ETH Zurich, Leonhardstrasse
21, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
Email: wongj@ethz.ch
466 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials 31(4)

commonly, by utilizing intermediate materials, such as preconsolidated tapes,8,9 com-

mingled yarns10–12 and powder-coated yarns.13 Intermediate materials are used in
thermoplastic composite processing to reduce the flow lengths necessary during con-
solidation and thereby enable faster cycle times.14 Commingled yarns, in particular, are a
promising intermediate material that allow for a higher degree of control over the fibre
volume fraction than powder-coated yarns while offering more flexibility and lower
material costs than preconsolidated tapes.15 However, due to the imperfect mingling
quality found in commercially available yarns,16,17 the part quality achieved in filament
winding processes using commingled yarns is generally poor,18 and highly sensitive to
the processing route and conditions.10,11 To ensure high part quality, filament-wound
parts are often consolidated after winding in a subsequent processing step, for example,
by vacuum bagging inside a heated oven or autoclave.11,19,20 However, processes that are
dependent on vacuum bag technologies to reduce voids are less attractive for processing
engineering thermoplastic polymers due to the higher processing temperatures required
and the temperature limitations of vacuum bagging materials. Therefore, filament
winding processes that can fully consolidate thermoplastic intermediate materials during
the winding process would potentially reduce manufacturing time and costs. While, the
in situ consolidation of commingled yarns during filament winding has been proven to be
a viable technology for manufacturing thermoplastic composites,10–12 the reports of
these investigations have been limited.
Here, we describe a systematic experimental study of the effects of processing
parameters during in situ consolidation on the part quality of filament wound hoops.
Specifically, we investigate the influence of processing temperature, line speed, fibre
tension, compaction force, and preheating on the elastic modulus, short-beam shear
strength and void content of aramid fibre-reinforced polyamide 6 (PA6) hoop-wound
cylinders.
We demonstrate that by optimizing the processing parameters, it is possible to
achieve material qualities using in situ consolidation during filament winding which are
comparable to those produced by compression moulding.

Materials and methods

Material and material characterization
Commingled yarn made of Twaron and PA6 (Akzo, the Netherlands) was the material
studied in these experiments. The commingled yarn was characterized by differential
scanning calorimetry (DSC) (DSC1; Mettler Toledo, Switzerland) and thermogravi-
metric analysis (TGA) (Pyris 1; Perkin Elmer, Waltham, MA, USA) to determine its
thermal properties. Optical microscopy (DMRXA, Leica, Germany) was used to analyse
the microstructures of the commingled yarn and the consolidated materials obtained
from them. For optical imaging, samples were embedded in resin (SpeciFix 20; Struers,
Cleveland, OH, USA) and polished (Abramin; Struers, Denmark) using successively
fine-grained discs (MD Piano 120 to MD Nap; Struers, Denmark) and diamond sus-
pensions (DiaPro Allegro/Largo 9 mm to Diapro Nap R 1 mm) to obtain smooth cross
Wong et al. 467

Figure 1. Optical microscopy image of a polished cross section of commingled yarn embedded in
epoxy resin. Aramid reinforcement fibres were imaged to have small circular cross sections, while
the polyamide 6 matrix fibres are comparatively larger and triangular in profile.

sections. Figure 1 shows a representative optical microscopy image of the unconsoli-

dated commingled yarn. Thermal and microstructural properties of the commingled yarn
material are provided in Table 1.

Filament winding
Filament winding was done on a custom-built two-axis filament winder (Waltritsch &
Wachter Sondermachinen, Germany) that includes a pneumatically controlled fibre
tensioning system. The filament winder was retrofitted in-house with the capacity for
processing thermoplastic composites, namely, by the addition of a heat gun, a spring-
controlled compaction roller (diameter ¼ 32 mm, length ¼ 28 mm), and a preheating
chamber (length ¼ 170 mm, inner diameter ¼ 10 mm). Figure 2 shows a photograph of
the retrofitted filament winder with the essential components indicated. Neither the
mandrel nor the compaction roller was equipped with independent heating or cooling
systems.
Prior to each production cycle, the filament winding system was brought to steady-
state conditions by allowing the heat gun and preheating system to run for 30 min. A
noncontact pyrometer focused at a position just behind the nip point was used to
measure the temperature evolution of the nip point over time. Despite the absence of a
temperature-controlled mandrel and compaction roller, the temperature evolution of the
nip point showed only mild fluctuations (approximately +10 C) over the duration of
the winding (>30 min). As subsequent layers were wound around the mandrel, the
temperature at the nip point was observed to drift to higher temperatures due to the low
468 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials 31(4)

Table 1. Properties of Twaron/PA6 commingled yarn.

Symbol Property Value Uncertainty Units

Yarn properties
–
Yarn type Commingled
Reinforcement fibre type Twarona –

Matrix fibre type PA6a –

vf Twaron fibre volume content 67 +1 % v/v

wf Twaron fibre weight percentage 61 +1 % w/w
dTwaron Twaron fibre diameter 15 +1 Mm
dPA6 PA6 fibre diameter 55 +5 Mm
–
Number of Twaron fibres 880 +40
–
Number of PA6 fibres 42 +1
Material properties
Twaron Density of Twaron 1.44a g/cm3
PA6 Density of PA6 1.13a g/cm3
Absorbed water content 3 +1 % w/w
Thermal properties

Tg Glass transition temperature of PA6 50 +5 C

Tm Melting temperature of PA6 220 +2 C

TDeg1 Degradation temperature of PA6 320 +10 C

TDeg2 Degradation temperature of Twaron 500 +10 C

PA6: polyamide 6.
a
Information taken from manufacturers’ data sheets.

Figure 2. Photograph of the retrofitted two-axis filament winder used in these experiments.

thermal conductivity of the added polymer layers; however, the magnitude of this drift
was within the fluctuations noted above. Between the nozzle of the heat gun and the
point just behind the nip point, the yarns were observed to undergo large temperature
drops that suggested cooling rates of 50 C/s–100 C/s. These high cooling rates are
Wong et al. 469

consistent with those previously reported in hot gas-based filament winding processes
due to thermal losses, resulting from convection and conduction to the ambient envi-
ronment and to the mandrel structure.9,11
Open-ended cylinders measuring 65 mm in diameter and 25 mm in length were
wound at an angle of +89.7 to the mandrel axis in a lay-up that was eight layers thick
(*1.1 mm when consolidated). In these investigations, the temperature of the heat gun
was varied from 350 C to 460 C, the line speed was varied from 5 to 100 mm/s, the
compaction force was varied from 38 to190 N, the fibre tension was varied from 2 to13 N
and the preheating temperature was varied from none (*24 C) up to 450 C.

Compression moulding
Reference samples for mechanical testing were produced by winding four layers of the
commingled yarn around a rectangular frame to make an eight-layer stack and com-
pression moulding the stack into a plate using a table press (TP 400; Fontijne, the
Netherlands) at a temperature of 240 C and under a pressure of 50 kN for 30 min to
ensure maximum consolidation.

Mechanical testing
Short-beam shear tests were used to determine short-beam shear strengths  SBS and
flexural moduli Ef in accordance with ASTM-D2344-89 and ASTM-D790, respectively,
using the following equations:
3 Fmax
 SBS ¼ ð1Þ
4 bh
L3 m
Ef ¼ ð2Þ
4bh3
where Fmax is the maximum load observed, m is the slope of the elastic region in the
load–displacement curve, and b, h, and L are the width, thickness, and span length of the
specimen.
The test specimens were produced by cutting specimens measuring 15 mm in length
along the fibre direction and b ¼ 5 mm in width from the consolidated tubes using a
circular diamond saw with water cooling. Samples were allowed to dry overnight at
ambient conditions prior to testing to allow the amount of absorbed water to reach an
equilibrium. Three-point loading tests were performed on the samples over a span of L ¼
12 mm using a universal test machine (Type 1474; Zwick, Germany) with a 100-kN load
cell. Loads were applied to the convex surfaces of the curved beams. Although the beam
curvatures were assumed to be negligible for the calculations of interlaminar shear
strength, the convex loading test configuration is expected to result in slightly higher
maximum shear stress concentrations than those predicted by simple beam theory.21
Therefore, the calculated shear strengths at fracture on the curved samples would be
lower than those obtained from straight beams of equivalent material qualities and thus
offer conservative estimates of the true material properties.
470 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials 31(4)

Figure 3. Correlation between void contents measured from density and those obtained by image
analysis. Density measurements greatly overestimate the void contents due to high surface roughness
as shown in the optical microscope image in the inset. Equation for fitted line is y ¼ 0.09765x – 1.092.

Void content determination

The void content Xvoid values of the composite tubes were determined using the
following equation:
measured m 1
Xvoid ¼ 1  ¼ 1  ð3Þ
theoretical Lhð2ri þ hÞ theoretical
where measured and theoretical are the measured density of the actual composite tube and
the theoretical density of a fully consolidated tube with no voids, respectively. In
Equation 1, m is the mass of the tube, L is the length of the tube, h is the thickness of the
shell and ri is the inner radius of the tube. However, this method of determining void
Xvoid severely overestimates the void content in the material due to surface roughness of
the filament wound tube as shown in the inset of Figure 3. Image analysis of polished
cross sections of the same samples indicated that although the void contents in the bulk
material are correlated with those estimated from density considerations, they were more
than an order of magnitude lower. To ensure a representative value, 10 cross-sectional
images from were analysed for each sample and their averages taken. Figure 3 shows the
relationship between the void contents derived from density measurements and those
derived from image analysis. The equation of the fitted line was used to correct the void
content values derived from the density measurements.

Results
The degree of consolidation of the commingled yarns and hence the quality and
mechanical properties of the filament wound parts were observed to vary greatly
Wong et al. 471

Figure 4. Optical microscopy images of polished cross sections of Twaron/polyamide 6 material

showing samples of poorly and well-consolidated materials made with filament winding using in situ
consolidation, with estimated void contents of 1.48% and 0.29%, respectively. Twaron fibres
appear as light colour circles embedded in a darker matrix. Black areas indicate voids due to poor
consolidation. These materials were processed under (a) heat gun temperature ¼ 460 C, line
speed ¼ 50 mm/s, compaction force ¼ 40 N, fibre tension ¼ 1.5 N and preheating temperature ¼
none, (b) heat gun temperature ¼ 450 C, line speed ¼ 10 mm/s, compaction force ¼ 190 N, fibre
tension ¼ 8 N and preheating temperature ¼ 120 C.


Figure 5. Measured mechanical properties of short-beam shear strength ( ) and flexural mod-
ulus (&) plotted against estimated void content of the materials produced by in situ consolidation
during filament winding.

depending on the processing parameters, ranging from materials with distinct fibre-rich
and matrix-rich regions and noticeable residual porosity to fully consolidated materials
as shown in the two cross-sectional images given in Figure 4. In components made from
fibre-reinforced composite materials, void content is a critical property as it has a pro-
minent influence on the strength and the stiffness of the material.22,23 For the aramid/
472 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials 31(4)

Figure 6. Sample curves from short-beam shear tests showing failure modes of interlaminar shear
(solid line) and inelastic deformation (dashed line). The well-consolidated brittle sample was
produced under heat gun temperature ¼ 460 C, line speed ¼ 10 mm/s, compaction force ¼
38 N, fibre tension ¼ 4.6 N and preheating temperature ¼ none. The inelastic sample was
produced under heat gun temperature ¼ 350 C, line speed ¼ 20 mm/s, compaction force ¼
38 N, fibre tension ¼ 4.6 N and preheating temperature ¼ none.

Figure 7. Photograph of filament wound cylinders produced using different heat gun tempera-
tures and line speeds showing various degrees of browning due to oxidative degradation.
Wong et al. 473

Figure 8. Short-beam shear strength of aramid/polyamide 6 as a function of heat gun temperature

and line speed. Fixed parameters: Compaction force ¼ 38 N, fibre tension ¼ 4.6 N and preheating
¼ none. A polynomial surface fit is used to emphasize the trend. Thick lines represent error bars.
The thin drop-down lines are provided to facilitate temperature readings and the dotted lines
connect samples produced at the same line speed.

PA6 composite material investigated here, the experimentally measured influences of

void content on shear strength and flexural stiffness are provided in Figure 5, where the
mechanical properties can be observed to decrease noticeably with increasing void
content. Furthermore, the degree of consolidation also determines the mechanisms by
which the samples failed in the short-beam shear tests. Well-consolidated samples
tended to fail by interlaminar shear, while poorly consolidated samples tended to fail by
inelastic deformation; sample curves for each type of failure mode are provided in Figure
6. Because the mechanical properties are so sensitive to the degree of consolidation,
identifying the optimal processing window is essential to obtaining high part quality in
filament winding processes. This is particularly critical when unconsolidated inter-
mediate materials are to be filament wound without additional processing steps, for
example, in an autoclave, to further reduce void content.
In fibre-reinforced composites, the processing parameters with the greatest influence
on the quality of materials are categorized as those that affect (1) the thermochemical
properties of material, that is, melt viscosity, (2) the forces driving matrix flow, that is,
474 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials 31(4)

Figure 9. Flexural modulus of aramid/polyamide 6 as a function of heat gun temperature and line
speed. Fixed parameters: Compaction force ¼ 38 N, fibre tension ¼ 4.6 N and preheating ¼ none.
A polynomial surface fit is used to emphasize the trend. Thick lines represent error bars. The thin
drop-down lines are provided to facilitate temperature readings and the dotted lines connect
samples produced at the same line speed.

pressure gradient and (3) the flow length required for consolidation.24 Darcy’s law
defines the relationship between these quantities as follows:

q ¼  rP ð4Þ

where q is the Darcy flux,  is the permeability of the reinforcement fibres,  is the
viscosity of fluid and rP is the pressure gradient.
In ideal scenarios, the viscosity of a thermoplastic polymer can be taken to be
dependent solely on temperature, decreasing exponentially with increasing temperature.
In practice, processing temperatures and times for thermoplastic polymers are limited by
thermal degradation of the polymer, especially in the presence of oxygen. TGA mea-
surements taken at 230 C under nitrogen and oxygen atmospheres over 5 h confirmed
that a significant degree of degradation occurred in the presence of oxygen during
prolonged exposure to heat. The photograph in Figure 7 shows oxidative degradation
is greatest when the yarns are processed at high temperatures and low line speeds,
Wong et al. 475

Figure 10. Void content of aramid/polyamide 6 as a function of heat gun temperature and
different line speed. Fixed parameters: Compaction force ¼ 38 N, fibre tension ¼ 4.6 N, preheat-
ing ¼ none. An exponential surface fit is used to emphasize the trend. Thick lines represent error
bars. The thin drop-down lines are provided to facilitate temperature readings and the dotted lines
connect samples produced at the same line speed.

maximizing exposure to oxidative conditions. Thermal degradation is indicated by the

noticeable darkening of the otherwise yellowish Twaron/PA6 material. Extreme oxi-
dative degradation occurred when high temperatures (>430 C) were combined with low
line speeds (5 mm/s), thus prohibiting the production of samples under these combi-
nations of parameters.
Conflictingly, the combination of high heat gun temperatures and low line speeds also
resulted in the filament wound materials with the highest mechanical properties in terms
of short-beam shear strength and flexural modulus, and the lowest void contents as
shown in Figure 8, Figure 9 and Figure 10, respectively. Processing the commingled
yarns at higher temperatures and lower line speeds both increases the thermal energy
transferred to a particular yarn segment and the time allowed for the melted matrix to
flow between the reinforcement fibres leading to more complete consolidation of the
final material. Within the range of heat gun temperatures and line speeds investigated
here, a combination of a heat gun temperature of 460 C and a line speed of 10 mm/s
yielded the highest short-beam shear strength of 21 MPa, the highest flexural modulus of
476 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials 31(4)


Figure 11. Effect of fibre tension on the short-beam shear strength ( ) and flexural modulus (&)
of Twaron/polyamide 6 thermoplastic composites consolidated in situ from commingled yarns
during filament winding. Inset shows the effect of fibre tension on the residual void content. Heat
gun temperature ¼ 426 C, line speed ¼ 20 mm/s, compaction force ¼ 38 N and preheating
temperature ¼ none.


Figure 12. Effect of compaction force on the short-beam shear strength ( ) and the flexural
modulus (&) of Twaron/polyamide 6 thermoplastic composites consolidated in situ from com-
mingled yarns during filament winding. Inset shows effect of compaction force on the residual void
content. Heat gun temperature ¼ 426 C, line speed ¼ 20 mm/s, fibre tension ¼ 4.6 N and
preheating temperature ¼ none.
Wong et al. 477


Figure 13. Effect of the preheater temperature on the short-beam shear strength ( ) and flexural
modulus (&) of Twaron/polyamide 6 thermoplastic composites consolidated in situ from com-
mingled yarns during filament winding. Inset shows the effect of the preheater temperature on the
residual void content. Heat gun temperature ¼ 424 C, line speed ¼ 20 mm/s, compaction force ¼
38 N and fibre tension ¼ 4.6 N.

12 GPa, and the lowest void content of 0.4%. Even though the surface fits in Figure 8,
Figure 9 and Figure 10 seem to suggest that even better mechanical properties can be
produced using combinations of even higher heat gun temperatures and lower line
speeds, the degraded samples in Figure 7 clearly indicate that the limits of the processing
windows have been reached. Therefore, further improvements in properties must be
found by adjusting other processing parameters.
In filament winding, the consolidation pressure that drives the matrix melt into the
channels between the dry reinforcement fibres can be provided by the fibre tension and
the compaction head. When using low-viscosity thermosetting resins such as epoxies,
the pressure applied by exerting tension on the filaments may be high enough to achieve
full impregnation of the fibres. However, the viscosity of thermoplastic melts is often
several orders of magnitude greater than those of thermosetting resins. Fibre tension was
varied from 2 to14 N, limited on the lower end by the pneumatic fibre tensioning system
and at the upper end by breaking of the unconsolidated commingled yarns. The con-
solidation pressures achieved using fibre tension alone were insufficient for producing
viable samples for mechanical testing. However, using the compaction head to apply a
minimal force, it was possible to study the effects of fibre tension on the mechanical and
material properties. Figure 11 shows that in the presence of a low compaction head force,
both short-beam shear strength and flexural modulus increase with fibre tension. The
increases in shear strength and flexural modulus at higher fibre tensions are attributed to
the introduction of internal stresses to the material through the tensioning of the yarn
during filament winding leading to a prestressed material that is capable of resisting
478 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials 31(4)

Figure 14. Cross-sectional optical microscope images of commingled yarns taken after passing
through the preheating system at a line speed of 10 mm/s and preheating temperatures of (a) 24 C,
(b) 233 C, (c) 352 C and (d) 452 C showing that the commingled yarns undergo noticeable
impregnation and consolidation at elevated temperatures prior to compaction at the nip point.
Near the melting temperature of polyamide 6, the matrix fibres can be seen to have been partially
melted, losing the triangular structure and taking more rounded forms as shown in (b).

higher bending loads applied to the convex surface. It was additionally noted that fibre
tensions greater than 12 N resulted in high internal stresses that made demoulding of the
cylinders difficult. Void content was not significantly affected by the fibre tension in
the investigated range, indicating that the lateral forces caused by tensioning the yarns
did not contribute much to consolidation and void reduction, at least in comparison to the
effects of loading the compaction head.
Supplementing fibre tensioning with a compaction roller increases the applied
compaction pressure and leads to improvements in the short-beam strength and flexural
modulus of the filament wound samples as shown in Figure 12. Moreover, increasing
compaction force resulted in observable reductions in void content. The inset in Figure
12 suggests that for the fixed processing parameters used here, the residual void content
can be reduced from >1% to *0.6% by increasing compaction force alone. Within the
limits of the designed compaction device, no optimal compaction pressure was found for
the processing of the Twaron/PA6 yarns. While the mechanical and material properties
Wong et al. 479

Figure 15. Description of possible and optimal processing windows found for filament winding
with in situ consolidation of Twaron/polyamide 6 commingled yarns. Viable processing ranges are
indicated as light green while optimum conditions are represented as dark green.

of the filament wound samples seem to increase with increasing compaction pressures,
matrix squeeze out will limit the use of high compaction pressures, especially for
polymer melts with low viscosities.
Preheating the commingled yarns prior to the heating and consolidation at the nip
point visibly improved the properties of the filament wound materials as summarized in
Figure 13. Considering the distance between the end of the preheating system and the nip
point, the moderate line speed and high cooling rates, preheating the commingled yarns
is unlikely to benefit the material by achieving higher temperatures at the nip point.
Indeed, no difference in temperature was measured at the nip point when the preheating
system was used even at high preheater settings. To investigate further the influence of
the preheater, the commingled yarns were passed through the preheating system at 10
mm/s at different set temperatures, and samples were taken from the yarns after the
material had exited the preheater but before coming into contact with the Teflon roller.
The optical microscope images of the yarn cross sections provided in Figure 14 show that
significant impregnation and consolidation of reinforcement fibres occur inside the
preheater when the temperature is above the melting point of the matrix. The preheating
temperature is limited, as is the temperature of the heat gun, by thermal degradation of
the polymer.
These experimental results allow us to identify suitable processing parameter win-
dows in which the mechanical and material properties are optimized by minimizing void
content while avoiding polymer degradation due to oxidative conditions. The feasible
480 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials 31(4)

Table 2. Mechanical properties measured from Twaron/PA6 materials processed by compression

moulding and filament winding.

Manufacturing process  SBS (MPa) Ef (GPa) Void content (%)

Compression moulding 18.8 + 1.7 12.7 + 1.4 0.24 + 0.07

Filament winding 17.0 + 1.7 13.3 + 1.6 0.25 + 0.1

PA6: polyamide 6.

and optimal processing windows for the parameters investigated are summarized
schematically in Figure 15. A final cylinder was manufactured using the settings
identified to be within each of the optimum parameters ranges, namely, a heat gun
temperature of 320 C combined with a line speed of 10 m/s, a fibre tension of 8 N, a
compaction force of 190 N and a preheating temperature of 330 C. The properties of the
material produced using the optimized processing conditions are compared with those of
materials produced from the Twaron/PA6 commingled yarns using compression
moulding in Table 2. The short-beam shear strength, flexural modulus and void content
of the samples produced using the two processes were measured, within experimental
error, to be identical. These results clearly demonstrate that the process of online con-
solidation of commingled yarns has the capacity to achieve material quality equal to that
produced by compression moulding processes, provided that appropriate processing
parameters are used.

Conclusions
We have demonstrated the ability to manufacture fully consolidated materials from
commingled yarns by consolidating the intermediate material in situ during filament
winding. By systematically investigating the effects of heat gun temperature, line speed,
fibre tension, compaction force and preheater temperature, a range of optimal settings
were identified, allowing a material quality equivalent to that produced by compression
moulding of unidirectional plates.
Further improvements in material quality and throughput may be achievable by
reducing the presence of oxygen at high temperatures, for example, using an inert hot gas
torch, processing at higher temperatures, for example, laser heat source, applying
heating/cooling elements to the mandrel and compaction roller, and improving the
mingling quality of the commingled yarns. Any improvements to material quality are,
however, expected to be minor as the void contents obtained using commingled yarns in
this process are already comparable to those achieved using a more established technique
for the processing of thermoplastic composites, that is, compression moulding.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr Giulio Molinari, Dr Alberto Sánchez Cebrián, Bryan
Louis, Christoph Schneeberger, Claudia Thurnherr and Mario Danzi for their scientific
Wong et al. 481

expertise and insightful discussions, and Thomas Heinrich and Hanspeter Eigenmann for
their technical support in refitting the filament winder.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: the Swiss-European Mobility Programme,
and the Commission for Technology and Innovation through the Swiss Competence
Center for Energy Research Efficient Technologies and Systems for Mobility.

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