%0 Journal Article
%T A heat
%A Lingyun Wang
%A Qiang Xu
%A Qing Wang
%A Weidong Zhu
%A Yinglin Ke
%J Journal of Composite Materials
%@ 1530-793X
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0021998318788918
%X In composite manufacturing, large composite parts usually exhibit high heating gradients during the autoclave process, which may intensify the process-induced residual stresses and deformations. As the thermal behavior of molds is of crucial importance to the curing performance of composites, a heat-balance method is presented to reduce the heating rate on overheated areas of molds, thus providing a more homogeneous curing process. The method is based on a local-isolation structure installed under the mold plate, which is used to change the local heat transfer coefficient of the mold. In the local-isolation structure application, an optimization process combining numerical simulations with a greedy genetic algorithm is developed to find the optimal layout and geometry of local-isolation structure in molds. The optimization results suggest that more uniform heating condition and more synchronous curing process can be achieved with the optimal design of local-isolation structure. In the case of a typical mold for C spar component, the maximum temperature difference in the composite part is reduce by 45.69%, while the maximum difference in degree of cure is decreased at a rate of 40.16%
%K Process simulation
%K thermal optimization
%K autoclave
%K mold
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021998318788918