Title: Advanced Process Monitoring and Control for CFRP RTM in Aerospace without compromises

Authors: " Nikos Pantelelis, Efthymios Bistekos, Marc Waris, Adrien Touze,"

DOI: 10.33599/nasampe/s.24.0044

Abstract: Resin resistivity has been used successfully at industrial scale for sensing resin arrival, viscosity and online glass transition temperature in the whole range of composites manufacturing [1, 2, 3]. However, in dielectric cure monitoring, the existence of carbon fibres has been always creating a challenging environment i.e. measuring the exceptionally low conductivity of the resin into a highly conductive carbon fibres environment. So when using conventional dielectric sensors, a glass fabric is added to isolate the sensing area from the carbon fibres. However, in 2019 a new type of dielectric durable cure sensor that doesn’t need any protection from carbon fibres, was launched and tested successfully [4] in the production of CFRP curved panels. Furthermore, in the Morpho project, using a similar concept, a new resin arrival-only sensor has been developed to cope with carbon fibres and together with other innovations are implemented in a challenging RTM aerospace application. For the real-time provision of resin viscosity, an extensive study of the correlation between resistivity and viscosity evolution as well as the effect of storage aging to both the viscosity and resistivity have been studied with the aim to provide an online viscosity estimation during injection together with the glass transition temperature online estimation during curing. The system has been used in a series of injection trials at Safran Composites showing very promising results to cut cycle time by 15 %.

References: 1.C. Lauter, K-P. Jaquemotte, N. Pantelelis, Improvement of productivity and quality in the wind energy industry through the use of an advanced sensor system, Sampe Journal, V.53/6, pp. 6-10. 2.Nikos Pantelelis, Matt Etchells, Cristian Lira, Efthymios Bistekos, Online Viscosity and Tg Measurement of CFRP manufactured using High-Pressure RTM, SAMPE Europe Conference, Nantes, September, 2019. 3.Philipp Zapp, Nikos Pantelelis, Hakan Ucan, The way to decrease the curing time by 50% in the manufacturing of structural components using the example of FML fuselage panels, SAMPE Europe Conference, Nantes, September, 2019. 4.Nikos Pantelelis, Efthymios Bistekos, Process monitoring and control for the production of CFRP components in “Proceedings of Conference SAMPE’10”, Seattle, USA (2010) 5.N. Pantelelis, M. Etchells, C. Lira, E. Bistekos, Online Viscosity and Tg Measurement of CFRP manufactured using High-Pressure RTM, SAMPE Europe Conference, Nantes, September, 2019. 6.N. Pantelelis, E. Bistekos, D. Breen, S. Wilson, W. Gerrits, S. Wilkens, Non-intrusive intelligent cure monitoring for enhancing the manufacturing of high-temp composite structures, SAMPE Europe Conference:, Baden, September 2021 7.L. Amirova, C. Brauner, M. Grob, N. Gort, F. Schadt, N. Pantelelis, T. Ricard, W. Gerrits, Online Cure Monitoring and Modelling of Cyanate Ester-Based Composites for High Temperature Applications, Polymers 13(18):3021, 2021 8.N. Pantelelis, Optimised cure cycles for resin transfer moulding, Composites science and technology 63 (2), 249-264

Conference: SAMPE 2024

Publication Date: 2024/05/20

SKU: TP24-0000000044

Pages: 9

Price: $18.00