Implementation of a parametric procedure allowing efficient positioning of heat sources: application to high-temperature composites thermoforming process

This work describes the implementation of a simple procedure that helps to easily position the heating elements in press plates used in high-temperature composites thermoforming process. The developed method permits to obtain desired temperature profiles on the surface of the press plates through two main steps. The first step consists in finding out an appropriate parametric curve that defines the spatial location of the heating sources into the thickness of the press heating plates. The second step uses an inverse method that combines a stochastic optimization algorithm in conjunction with finite element simulations. This second step serves for the adjustment of the position curve parameters to obtain a simulated temperature profile as close as possible to the expected one at the press plates surface. This easy-to-implement approach is shown to be very effective to rapidly obtain a suitable location of the heat sources that minimizes energy consumption.