CURE CYCLE ACCELERATION VIA NANO-DRIVEN THERMAL PROCESSING OF OUT-OF-AUTOCLAVE THERMOSETTING COMPOSITES

摘要

Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) comprised of carbon microfiber reinforcement with thermoset and thermoplastic polymer matrices are increasingly utilized by aerospace companies for vehicle lightweighting. Traditional curing processes such as autoclaves and ovens rely on convective heat transfer, which has both inefficiencies and several limitations that may be overcome with direct (conductive) heating methods. Direct Joule heating with carbon nanotube (CNT) film network heaters has shown significant promise in overcoming inefficiencies in curing out-of-autoclave (OoA) prepreg CFRP. This Out-of-Oven (OoO) conductive curing technique is used here to cure aerospace-grade OoA CFRP prepreg laminates with equivalent quality to that achieved with the manufacturer's recommend cure cycle (MRCC) in an oven in a fraction of the time by taking advantage of the OoO heaters enhanced rate of heating to redesign the cure cycle utilizing finite element simulations.