Abstract
Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics (CFRP) is a material developed for its high strength and light weight in a broad variety of industries including aerospace, automotive, and leisure. Due to the rapid molding cycle time, high-pressure resin transfer molding (HP-RTM) processes are prone to molding defects and susceptible to various process variables such as the resin injection rate, pressure and temperature in the mold, vacuum, end-gap, pressing force, and binder. In recent years, process monitoring technology with various sensors has been applied to stabilize the HP-RTM process and control process variables. The field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based embedded monitoring system proposed in this study enabled high-speed real-time signal processing with multiple sensors, namely pressure, temperature, and linear variable differential transformer (LVDT), and proved feasibility in the field. In the HP-RTM process, the impregnation and curing of the resin were predicted from the cavity pressure and temperature variations during the injection and curing stages. In addition, the thickness of the CFRP specimen was deduced from the change in the end-gap through the detection of the LVDT signal. Therefore, the causes of molding defects were analyzed through process monitoring and the influence of molding defects on the molding quality of CFRP was investigated.
Highlights
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are materials that are developed for their high strength and light weight in various industries, including aerospace, automotive, and leisure
To obtain a uniform CFRP quality, the temperature and pressure of the resin and hardener should be maintained at a constant so that the viscosity of the resin can be kept at a constant
In the high-pressure resin transfer molding (HP-resin transfer molding (RTM)) process, the most important factor that influences the quality of the CFRP surface is the surface integrity of the mold surface transferred to the surface of the CFRP specimen and the resin flow
Summary
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are materials that are developed for their high strength and light weight in various industries, including aerospace, automotive, and leisure. The mechanical properties of CFRP such as its strength, allowable stress, and hardness are affected by the type of carbon fiber, resin, and lamination orientation [1,2]. Numerous studies have investigated various molding methods as the application of CFRP has increased in the automotive industry due to greenhouse gas emission regulation and fuel efficiency improvement requirements. Typical CFRP molding methods include hand lay-up, filament winding, pultrusion, autoclaving, and resin transfer molding (RTM) [3,4,5]. It is difficult to apply RTM molding in mass production because it has a long process cycle time and low production efficiency [6,7,8]
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