Numerical and experimental study of hot pressing technique for resin-based friction composites

Abstract

A fully coupled thermomechanical computational framework based on the Hot Optimal Transportation Meshfree (HOTM) method is presented to derive the process-microstructure-properties correlation for resin-based friction composites manufactured by hot pressing technique. The raw material is considered as reinforcing fibers and strengthening particles explicitly embedded in a continuum porous media. The manufacturing process is modeled as the raw material experiencing extremely large compression under applied pressure and temperature boundary conditions to predict the formation and evolution of the composite’s microstructure. A chemo-thermo-mechanical constitutive model is proposed to describe the dynamic response of the matrix material involving large inelastic deformation, resin melting and polymerization. The microstructure of the final product produced by hot pressing processes is predicted by solving the deformation, temperature and curing degree of the raw material using the HOTM method. The computational framework is validated by comparing the calculated fiber orientation distribution in the friction materials to experimental measurements under various processing conditions. The sensitivity of composite’s mechanical properties on the fiber orientation is further studied by the proposed numerical method and experiments.