The mechanical effect of monitoring and controlling the impregnation in the resin infusion process

Abstract

Nowadays, most of industries are optimizing their processes to make their products more competitive. In the composites manufacturing industry, there is a big gap between the almost fully automated processes and those which require an intensive labor-work. Although it has many advantages, the resin infusion process is characterized for its lack of automation. As a consequence, the results are strongly dependent on the process boundaries, the operator skills and expertise, and the result is usually far away from the optimum. In this work, the application of a novel methodology and its capability to maximize the mechanical properties of infusion-manufactured composite materials is presented. After manufacturing stitched and unstitched materials at different impregnation velocities, an optimum value was assessed. The application of this value during the manufacture has increased the tensile and impact properties.