Lightweight structures

Characterizing uncured composite materials

When manufacturing composite parts, the quality of the finished product depends on the properties of the uncured material. These properties often vary greatly with temperature and deformation rate. At the Lightweight structures laboratory, the static testing machine, along with a custom built heat chamber and rigs allows for the characterization of uncured material under different temperatures and displacement rates. Typically to achieve this, friction properties are measured to characterize the inter-ply behavior and bias-extension tests are done to characterize the intra-ply properties. This information can then be used to simulate the forming and tune the manufacturing process to achieve a better result.