The present study consists of fabricating flat laminates using out-of-autoclave techniques inorder to understand the effect of non-ideal processing conditions, or process deficiencies, onmanufacturing. The laminates, based on woven and unidirectional fibre architectures, aremanufactured within an instrumented tool capable of regulating vacuum bag and ambientpressures independently and tracking the laminate thickness in-situ throughout cure. Laminatesare cured under baseline (ideal) conditions as well as in the presence of four potential processingdeficiencies: repeated debulking; reduced ambient pressure; reduced vacuum and restrictedlaminate air evacuation. Once cured, each laminate is analyzed to determine its quality in termsof thickness and void content. These results are then correlated with the consolidation dataobtained in-situ to gain insight into the physical phenomena involved. The results show thatrepeated debulking has no detrimental effect; that for the same compaction pressure, conditionsof reduced ambient pressure or reduced vacuum have comparable detrimental effects and thatrestricted laminate air evacuation has the highest negative impact on quality.
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