INTELLIGENT MOLDING PROCESS AND THE INTELLIGENT MANUFACTURE SYSTEM OF COMPOSITES

Composite materials have been widely applied because of their many desirable properties. But the bottleneck to widespread acceptance in more commonplace applications is the inability to manufacture composite parts cheaply and reliably. The cure cycle has a significant effect on the quality of the finished part.The traditional cure cycle based on an empirical approach could not ensure the quality of cured products in the aspects of unstabilized performance, the high cost of production and the low efficiency. In this paper, the technology of intelligent cure operation is set forth according to the developing tendency of smart material and structure. An intelligent-system-based tool was developed in order to operate the autoclave cure of a fiber reinforced thermosetting matrix composite laminate in an optimal manner. The intelligent system includes an expert system, a neural network and the step optimal model whose function,structure and attaching parts are systematically set forth. They can achieve the desired objectives such as minimizing the cure time while still producing a high quality part.