Abstract
Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites are integral to today’s industries. Curing or consolidation are vital processes for manufacturing CFRP components. Microwave processing has many advantages compared with conventional processing technologies using ovens or autoclaves; however, the uneven temperature distribution caused by the non-uniform microwave field has a significant influence on the quality of the cured products. In this study, we propose a new idea to solve this problem, i.e., limiting the absorption of hot areas. Under such circumstances, cold ones can catch up with them more easily. To adjust the absorbing capability of the CFRP laminate, periodically arranged metallic resonance structures supported by a dielectric spacer are introduced on its surface. The dielectric spacer, made of epoxy matrix and strontium titanate particles, is designed to possess a dielectric constant positively related to temperatures. In this situation, the microwave absorption (2.45 GHz) of the metal-dielectric-CFRP configuration is changed from 97.6% at room temperature to 55.9% at 150 °C continuously. As a result, a reduction of 43.1% in maximum temperature difference and 89% in standard deviation has been achieved.
Highlights
Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites are integral to today’s aerospace, automotive, and energy industries due to their excellent specific strength and stiffness, chemical resistance, and thermal stability [1]
CFRP components are commonly heated by heat transfer, in ovens and autoclaves, or via tools, which suffers from issues such as inaccurate temperature control, long processing cycle, and sometimes high energy consumption [4,5]
The uneven temperature distribution seriously restricts the industrial application of the microwave processing technology, as problems such as distortion and ablation would be caused by the local hot spots and cold spots on the composite surface [10,11,12]; how to improve the heating uniformity is of great significance for composites microwave processing and has attracted much attention worldwide
Summary
Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites are integral to today’s aerospace, automotive, and energy industries due to their excellent specific strength and stiffness, chemical resistance, and thermal stability [1]. Curing or consolidation are vital processes when manufacturing CFRP components [2,3], where the resin matrix is changed from the viscous state in preforms to the loadable solid phase in final products, through chemical reactions or physical melting and solidification at specific temperatures CFRP components are commonly heated by heat transfer, in ovens and autoclaves, or via tools (in liquid composite molding), which suffers from issues such as inaccurate temperature control, long processing cycle, and sometimes high energy consumption [4,5]. The uneven temperature distribution seriously restricts the industrial application of the microwave processing technology, as problems such as distortion and ablation would be caused by the local hot spots and cold spots on the composite surface [10,11,12]; how to improve the heating uniformity is of great significance for composites microwave processing and has attracted much attention worldwide
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