Adapting a Microprocessor System to Autoclave Processing

Abstract

The processing of advanced composites has taken great strides in the last six years. The early interests in the control and quality assurance of resin systems and prepregs soon led to a broad development of techniques used to follow the processing history. This included analysis of materials from resins to fibers by the prepregger, through the fabrication of the individual composite part and into the service for performance data. The results of these interests have given the processing industry a broad range of instrumental techniques that furnish a wide variety of process-property data such as viscosities, chemical species distribution, reaction energies, etc, that can be used to judge optimum cure profiles.¹ The implementation of these results are seen in the many material specifications that have been written in the past four years.