Cure-induced residual stress buildup and distortions of CFRP laminates with stochastic thermo-chemical and viscoelastic models: Experimental verifications

Abstract

This paper proposes a stochastically coupled thermo-chemical and viscoelastic model and provides new insights from comparisons of the cure-induced residual stresses and distortions between various ply configurations. Six different laminate configurations were modeled to compare the material response during four manufacturing steps: in-mold curing, cool-down, post-curing, and final cool-down. While homogeneous plates with cross-ply configuration showed the same residual stresses at all the analyzed points, nonhomogeneous cross-ply laminates with random shrinkage showed variations in the stresses. It shows the importance of considering the randomness of the parameters when modeling composite materials’ manufacturing process.