An Investigation of the Thermomechanical Behavior of Fiber Reinforced Thermoset Composite Parts

将对纤维增强复合材料部件的热机械行为进行研究。该项目的目标是继续研究纤维增强热固性零件的热机械行为的建模、分析和过程模拟。这样的研究将增加对增强塑料件收缩、翘曲和表面波纹度背后的现象和物理的理解。该项目将分为两部分：实验部分和计算机建模部分。这项研究的实验方面涉及材料的热机械性能表征。在这里，将研究固化度对弹性常数和凝固过程中收缩的影响。在该项目的第二部分中，将引入固化引起的收缩，并将开发材料张量的本构模型，并将其应用到现有的有限元计算机模拟中，模拟在薄纤维和厚纤维增强热固性零件成型过程中发生的热机械过程。模拟考虑了在真实的工业加工条件下模塑的复杂几何图形的部分。了解塑料的热机械行为，并能够在实际制造部件之前预测填充图案、纤维取向、固化过程中的温度场、残余应力、空洞和裂缝、收缩、翘曲和表面波纹度，可以提高部件质量，并消除一些在部件和模具设计的早期阶段完成的昂贵和耗时的任务。

An investigation of the thermomechanical behavior of fiber reinforced composite parts will be conducted. The objective of the project is to continue research in modeling, analysis and process simulation of the thermomechanical behavior of fiber reinforced thermoset parts. Such a study will increase the understanding of the phenomena and the physics behind shrinkage, warpage and surface waviness of reinforced plastic parts. The project will be divided into two portions: and experimental and a computer modeling portion. The experimental aspect of the research deals with thermomechanical material properties characterization. Here, the effect that degree of cure has on the elastic constants and on shrinkage during solidification will be studied. In the second portion of the project the shrinkage due to cure will be introduced and a constitutive model for the material tensor will be developed and implemented into existing finite element computer simulations of the thermomechanical processes that take place during molding of thin and thick fiber reinforced thermoset parts. The simulation considers parts of complex geometry molded under realistic industrial processing conditions. Understanding the thermomechanical behavior of plastics and being able to predict filling patterns, fiber orientation, temperature fields during cure, residual stresses, voids and cracks, shrinkage, warpage and surface waviness before a part is actually manufactured leads to higher part quality and eliminates some of the expensive and time consuming tasks done in the early stages of part and mold design.