Michael Wenani Nielsen

Life cycle strain monitoring in glass fibre reinforced polymer laminates using embedded fibre Bragg grating sensors from manufacturing to failure

A holistic approach to strain monitoring in fibre-reinforced polymer composites is presented using embedded fibre Bragg grating sensors. Internal strains are monitored in unidirectional E-glass/epoxy laminate beams during vacuum infusion, curing, post-curing and subsequent loading in flexure until failure. The internal process-induced strain development is investigated through use of different cure schedules and tool/part interactions. The fibre Bragg grating sensors successfully monitor resin flow front progression during infusion, and strain development during curing, representative of the different cure temperatures and tool/part interfaces used. Substantial internal process-induced strains develop in the transverse fibre direction, which should be taken into consideration when designing fibre-reinforced polymer laminates. Flexure tests indicate no significant difference in the mechanical properties of the differently cured specimens, despite the large differences in measured residual strains. This indicates that conventional flexure testing may not reveal residual strain or stress effects at small specimen scale levels. The internal stresses are seen to influence the accuracy of the fibre Bragg gratings within the loading regime. This study confirms the effectiveness of composite life cycle strain monitoring for developing consistent manufacturing processes.

Multiphysics modelling of manufacturing processes: A review:

Numerical modelling is increasingly supporting the analysis and optimization of manufacturing processes in the production industry. Even if being mostly applied to multistep processes, single process steps may be so complex by nature that the needed models to describe them must include multiphysics. On the other hand, processes which inherently may seem multiphysical by nature might sometimes be modelled by considerably simpler models if the problem at hand can be somehow adequately simplified. In the present article, examples of this will be presented. The cases are chosen with the aim of showing the diversity in the field of modelling of manufacturing processes as regards process, materials, generic disciplines as well as length scales: (1) modelling of tape casting for thin ceramic layers, (2) modelling the flow of polymers in extrusion, (3) modelling the deformation process of flexible stamps for nanoimprint lithography, (4) modelling manufacturing of composite parts and (5) modelling the selective laser melting process. For all five examples, the emphasis is on modelling results as well as describing the models in brief mathematical details. Alongside with relevant references to the original work, proper comparison with experiments is given in some examples for model validation.