Residual Stress in Polymeric Composites During Curing

A numerical procedure to simulate the curing process of polymer-based composites is proposed. This model is applied to a carbon-epoxy composite at a micromechanical level to predict residual stress at the end of the process and the evolution of the most important process parameters. A finite element model is written in the Ansys APDL environment and comprises two moduli that must be solved consecutively: the thermal-kinetical and structural modules. At each timestep, first thermal/kinetics problem is solved, then the temperature and degree of conversion profile results are used to calculate the viscoelastic properties, allowing the calculation of residual stress.