Method and apparatus for sorting fibers

摘要

A method of determining the length distribution in the population of glass or plastic fibers in, for example, a fiber reinforced polymeric article wherein the fibers recovered from a representative article are immersed in a non-polar liquid and the combination of the liquid and fibers is passed through a sieve stack while an applied high electric field produces a relatively uniform alignment of the fibers as they pass through the sieves thereby improving the accuracy of the filtering process.

主权项

1. A method of determining the length distribution of fibers in a collection of fibers comprising the steps of:
immersing the fibers in a non-polar liquid; passing the fibers in the non-polar liquid through a stack of sieves in a fluid flow pass wherein each sieve represents and collects a different progressively shorter fiber length while, at the same time, applying an electric field to immersed fibers prior to passing the fibers in the non-polar liquid through the sieves; and quantifying the collected fibers in each sieve in the stack.