Computer-aided design and manufacture : software for the definition of the curing conditions of composite material parts

This work consists in the development of a software able to define and optimise the autoclave cure cycles for thick laminated plates. At first, we have modelled the manufacturing processes as well as the material transformations of a composite part during an autoclave cure cycle. Then, from these models, a computational code has been devised in order to simulate the autoclave processing of composite material parts. These calculations involve the evolution of the temperature, the degree of cure and the viscosity of the polymeric matrix as functions of time and location through the plate thickness. These parameters associated to several constraint functions such as the final degree of cure or the maximal processing time have been used to develop an optimisation procedure of curing conditions. Finally, we have successfully tested the software for the optimisation of the manufacturing of a 30mm thick epoxy reinforced carbon fibre composite plate.