Effect of the smart cure cycle on mechanical property of carbon epoxy composite laminate

Abstract

In general, a thermal residual stress is generated during a curing process of composite laminates due to the difference of coefficient of thermal expansion of each layer. The thermal residual stress during the fabrication process make the mechanical properties of composite laminates weaken such as fatigue life and dimensional accuracy and tensile strength and so on. In this work, smart cure cycle with carbon epoxy composite symmetrical laminate which stacked [0 5/905]S was used to reduce the fabricational thermal residual stress of the bonding layer between composites laminated different fiber directions. The curing reaction was monitored by using dielectrometry. To evaluate the thermal residual stress, the curvature experiments with a symmetric stacking sequence of [02/90 2]T were performed. From the study, it was concluded that about 26% of thermal residual stress during fabrication could be reduced in a composite laminate by adjusting cure cycle, which improved it static tensile strength in 16%.