Duration: 01/01/2007 – 31/12/2007
Liquid Moulding techniques are commonly used for composite materials production, based on thermosetting resins. In particular the present work is focused on the Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Moulding (VARTM) techniques.
In the last few years the aeronautic industries showed an increasing interest towards these techniques, cause its reliability, production flexibility, cost and time saving, if compared with Autoclave Moulding, commonly used for aeronautical products, which is extremely expensive, and low productivity technique.
In this work the reinforcements permeability and capillary pressure for a single volume fraction of carbon fibers has been experimentally determined, with the aim to set the best processing parameter to produce high performance and low defect laminates.
As a matrix a high performance epoxy resin has been used. For the resin itself, a cure kinetics model has been developed, other than weathering and mechanical characterisation. Mechanical characterisation revealed a very high strenght and stiffness components, comparable with the same roducts as well as they were developed by mean of Autoclave Mulding.
