Towards rapid manufacturing of angled autoclaved composite laminates with minimised spring-in – a Taguchi experiments and finite element analysis based approach

Abstract

Cure induced deformations in polymer composites lead to increased component rejection and assembly time. Warpage is generally accounted at the tool design stage, using past experience, often resulting in several trials to fabricate an exact composite tool or part. In this paper, the Taguchi design of experiments is used to minimise the spring-in of angled autoclaved composites. Three varieties (glass, carbon and Kevlar with epoxy resin matrix) of woven prepregs used in the transport aircraft program of Indian aerospace sector are investigated. The significance and optimum setting of eight process parameters for yielding minimum spring-in is obtained by ANOVA analysis. Further, the experimental results are validated using a 2-D, anisotropic, coupled thermal-displacement FEM formulation. A good agreement is obtained between the experimental and FEM results, validating the integrated approach. This approach is likely to assist in rapid composite part manufacturing meeting the requirements of a superior quality, ab-initio composite part.