The focus of this study was placed on investigating the effect of plate thickness and boundary conditions on the curing process. Typically, for thin plates, the temperature distribution closely resembles the autoclave profile. However, if this profile exhibits portions where the temperature increases rapidly, thermal spiking appeared inside the composite. For thick plates, the heat transfer to the centerline occurs slower such that in the first stages of the process, the temperature in the middle is lower than the one on the boundary. 2 Degree of cure as a function of time and position along the thickness Figure 3.
Composites temperature as a function of time and position along the thickness.
In this scheme, the time step is adjusted to make sure that, during each step, the maximum temperature change at any node does not exceed a pre-specified value. In this analysis, this value was set to 2 Kelvin. A comparison between the two finite element approaches was conducted. Minor differences between the two approaches were observed and for all practical applications can be neglected. Additional examples were investigated.