Simulation strategy to compensate spring-in deformations in aeronautical panel made by liquid resin infusion

Abstract

Spring-in in composite manufacturing is a relevant non desired effect that complicates the industrialization process of new composite parts. Geometrical deviations of the part with regard to the nominal dimensions  hinders posterior assembly operations or even can cause unconformities (part rejection). Although some correction operations may be introduced in the assembly method to absorb these deviations, a preferred approach is to compensate the tool geometry to produce the part within tolerances. This contribution presents a methodology that, in an iterative process, links a MEF simulation workflow for the prediction of process induced distortions, a routine to compute deviations and updating tool cavity surface, till the deviations are within a target tolerance. The spring-in calculation engine is implemented in Abaqus Standard with specific subroutines to model resin curing kinetics, heat generation, cure dependent mechanical constitutive model with consideration of thermal expansion and cure shrinkage, and specific strategies to simulate the tool/part interactions. The spring-in engine is incorporated in an external Python manager in charge of post-processing results, updating the mesh and launching the executions. This methodology aims at proposing a modified tool surface geometry that could be used to build a compensated tool at first, reducing industrialization time and cost.