A carbon-fiber laminated tail rotor spar is manufactured via a press cure operation that is highly sensitive to process variability. Process Certification, Sikorsky Aircraft's six-sigma program, was applied to identify and control sources of variation to a level that was previously unattainable with traditional trial and error methods. Aided by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling, the raw material (prepreg) manufacturing process was optimized to produce a more consistent product. These improvements resulted in a significant reduction in the cost of poor quality and increased part production rates at Sikorsky Aircraft. The statistical methodology reported here is demonstrated to resolve complex composite process issues and may potentially be used to design robust processes that are tolerant of process variability.
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