Abstract
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are widely used in aerospace and new energy vehicles due to their high specific strength and flexible design ability. At present, the traditional forming process of CFRP curved surface components has problems of low mechanical properties and long processing time. In this paper, a new method of hot gas forming was proposed to obtain CFRP components. By applying high temperature and high-pressure gas on one side of CFRP, the material was forced to deform and solidify at the same time. A special device for hot gas forming was designed and developed. The curing behavior and mechanical properties of original CFRP plates were studied. The main defects and the corresponding control methods of hot gas forming parts were analyzed by forming spherical parts, and the feasibility of the hot gas forming process was verified. Taking the battery cover plate of a new energy vehicle as the research object, the influence of forming temperature, gas pressure, pressurization rate and other process parameters on the mechanical properties of complex CFRP components were analyzed. The mechanism of both strength and efficiency improvement was analyzed. The results showed that with the increasing of gas pressure, the tensile strength and forming efficiency of the CFRP curved components were improved obviously. Under reasonable forming parameters, the tensile strength of the obtained parts was increased by 37%, and the forming efficiency was increased by 58%. The fiber bundles were distributed more evenly and compactly under the hot gas forming. This showed that the use of hot gas forming had good potential in the preparation of high-performance CFRP parts, which was helpful to improve the processing efficiency and forming quality of CFRP curved parts in the aerospace and new energy automotive fields.
Highlights
In recent years, light materials such as aluminum alloy [1], magnesium alloy [2], titanium alloy [3] and fiber composite materials [4] have been widely used in various manufacturing industries
In order to solve the problems of long processing cycle and poor performance of traditional methods, this paper proposed a hot gas forming process of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) complex parts
The hot gas forming process has been widely used in the metal forming area, but the feasibility of hot gas forming on CFRP still needs to be confirmed
Summary
Light materials such as aluminum alloy [1], magnesium alloy [2], titanium alloy [3] and fiber composite materials [4] have been widely used in various manufacturing industries. Common forming methods for complex parts of CFRP materials include autoclave molding [5], resin transfer molding [6], and hot stamping [7]. Compared with the autoclave molding process, the RTM process has the advantages of short molding cycle and low manufacturing cost It can manufacture parts with complex shapes. In order to solve the problems of long processing cycle and poor performance of traditional methods, this paper proposed a hot gas forming process of CFRP complex parts. Taking the battery cover plate of a new energy vehicle as the research object, the influence of forming temperature, gas pressure, pressurization rate and Materials 2021, 14, 5316 other process parameters on the mechanical properties of complex surface components were analyzed
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