A Simultaneous Lay-Up and in situ Cure Process for Thick Composites

A progressive lay-up and in situ cure process is presented for manufactur ing thick polymeric composite structures. Manufacturing cycle times can be reduced sig nificantly, since this process combines the lay-up and curing. Also, the material degrada tion due to thermal spiking which is generally very large in thick-section composites can be avoided, depending on the judicious selection of process variables such as cure temper ature, ambient temperatures, and material supply rate. A one-dimensional combined thermo-chemical heat transfer model was developed and solved numerically in order to monitor the cure, temperature distributions, and thermal spiking through the thickness. In order to validate the analysis, 12 mm thick graphite/epoxy (AS4/3501-6) plates were manu factured by the current process and were scanned by DSC (differential scanning calorim eter). The predicted temperature and degree of cure profiles are compared with experi ments. Both results are in good agreement which confirms the accuracy of this cure simulation study. Both graphite/epoxy and glass/polyester systems are investigated in this article.