Electrical Resistance Curing Method for Hybrid Metal-CFRP Tubes

Hybrid metal-Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) core tubes and rollers are becoming progressively important in the automotive, aerospace, and printing industry for the excellent performance/price ratio. The enhanced mechanical properties and favorable tribological performance of these tubes are provided by the coupling of metal with CFRP compared to tubes build from solely CFRP or metal. However, these kinds of tubes are very expensive and only the co-curing technique of metal and CFRP parts guarantees a reduction in production cost and the competitiveness of products. In this work, a simple out-of-autoclave (OOA) electrical resistance co-curing method for hybrid metal-CFRP tubes, based on an analytical model, that exploits the Joule effects, is proposed and verified by experimental test and finite element analysis (FEA). This technique can also be used for other geometries and guarantees considerable energy savings.