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Cure Monitoring and Simulation of Textile CFRP by Optical Fiber Sensors
Abstract
In the present study, Fresnel-based fiber-optic sensors were used for cure monitoring of textile FRP. First, degree-of-cure curves of resin were measured by the fiber-optic sensors and DSC analysis. Comparing the curves by fiber-optic sensors and DSC analysis, it appeared that the degree-of-cure curves by the two methods agreed well with each other. Second, the cure monitoring of textile CFRP was conducted with heating temperature of 80°C. It was found that the degree-of-cure curve of CFRP was almost the same as that of matrix resin. Cure process simulation was conducted using a kinetic model obtained from DSC analysis and fiber-optic sensing. The simulated results showed good agreement with the experimental results. Moreover, it was confirmed that this method can be used for real-time simulation of degree-of-cure and control of molding temperature. Next, the GFRP which the temperature distribution occurred was conducted multi-point cure monitoring. It was able to measure the distribution of the degree of cure. It has been found that multi-points measurement of the degree-of-cure was useful to estimate distribution of degree of cure of FRP.