Zonally heated tooling for moulding complex and highly tapered composite parts

Vincent K. Maes*, Arjun Radhakrishnan, Diego Lombetti, James Kratz

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

Abstract

Curing of composite material parts often rely on slow cure cycles to manage exotherms and avoid hot or cold spots in the part. This is especially true for larger, thicker and/or geometrically complex parts, which suffer from unevenness in heating between different regions of the part stemming from thickness variations and made worse by the use of convection heating in ovens and autoclaves. An alternative technology for moulding is using heated tooling, which improves the energy efficiency of the process but can also significantly increase the tooling costs. However, the true power of heated tooling is in the ability to tailor the temperature profile in different regions. By introducing zonal heating, significantly faster process cycles can be achieved, hence improving production rates. Using cure simulation, two identical components are analysed, one part produced using convection heating (i.e., oven) and the second made using direct heating (i.e., heated tooling). The zonal approach was tuned based on numerical models and shows a reduction of 17.5% in terms of cure time and the experimental trials found an approximate 45% reduction in energy consumption.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1126932
JournalFrontiers in Materials
Volume10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 Apr 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported through the Bristol Impact Acceleration Account under the EPSRC grant EP/R511663/1 as well as by the Future Composites Manufacturing Research Hub under the EPSRC grant EP/P006701/1. The support is gratefully acknowledged.

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 Maes, Radhakrishnan, Lombetti and Kratz.

Keywords

  • cure simulation
  • energy efficiency
  • moulding
  • tapered composites
  • zonally heated tooling

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Zonally heated tooling for moulding complex and highly tapered composite parts'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this