Development of Aerospace Composite Structures Through Vacuum-Enhanced Resin Transfer Moulding Technology (VERTMTy): Vacuum-Enhanced Resin Transfer Moulding

Introduction

Quality products with low cost manufacturing routes are the major objectives for the product development in any application. The current statement is evident for polymer-matrix composites, particularly in high end applications such as aerospace & mass transit structures. These applications require advanced composite materials tailored to meet the property demands posted by dynamic load conditions and hence, the use of wide spectrum of constituents and architectures are vital to cater the needs. Consequently, the development of novel composite materials with the permutations of ingredients leads to the innovative processing techniques. Importantly, part thickness also plays a major role in bearing dynamic mechanical load at the application conditions. Most of the thick sectioned composite parts for an application are manufactured by primitive processing routes such as hand layup method or costly autoclave processing. However, the manufacturing processes fail to prepare economical thick sectioned composite parts that meet the demands such as uniform resin-fibre volume fractions, uniform product thickness, reduced porosity, surface properties, dynamic loading etc. posted by higher end applications. Notably, most composite moulding processes fail to manufacture thick sectioned composite parts owing to problems that rose due to ununiform mould filling and resin curing across the part section. To address the gap in the manufacturing with economical processing routes of thick sectioned advanced composite parts showing superior properties at different wall sections, an innovative composite manufacturing technology coupling resin transfer moulding (RTM) processing and vacuum applications namely “Vacuum Enhanced Resin Transfer Moulding Technology (VERTMTy)” is conceptualized, proposed and developed.