Curing simulation of composites coupled with infrared heating

Sawsane Nakouzi (1) , Johann Pancrace (1) , Fabrice Schmidt (1) , Yannick Le Maoult (1) , Florentin Berthet (1)

1 ICA - Institut Clément Ader

Because of higher specific strength and stiffness, low weight, and good resistance to corrosion, the use of composite materials in aerospace structures has increased. Aircraft industry has recently begun to investigate Liquid Composites Molding techniques (LCM) through research programs because of its ability to produce large parts at a low cost. In this paper, we have not addressed the filling step during which the resin flows through fibrous media, but we investigate the numerical simulation of curing reinforced RTM-6 by infrared heating. A ray tracing in-lab software called RAY-HEAT is used to compute the radiation energy due to the interaction between reinforced RTM-6 and lamps. Finite element based program COMSOL Multiphysics™ has been used to simulate the curing process. Thermochemical model has been implemented in order to compute reaction rate as a function of reaction temperature and degree of conversion using a cure kinetic model .

Mots clés: polymer composite; infrared heating; degree of cure; epoxy resin; graphite/epoxy; modeling

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Sawsane Nakouzi, Johann Pancrace, Fabrice Schmidt, Yannick Le Maoult, Florentin Berthet. Curing simulation of composites coupled with infrared heating. ESAFORM 2010 -13th International ESAFORM conference on material forming, Apr 2010, Brescia, Italy. 4 p. ⟨hal-01760278⟩