Forming of sandwich panels on a reconfigurable mould

Abstract

The subject of this thesis is the forming of sandwich panels on a reconfigurable mould. The field of research is composite sheet forming. This novel manufacturing process at Curve Works has problems with panel quality, especially out-of-plane wrinkles. Exploratory research on quality improvement is performed by analysing the underlying mechanisms of single curved resin infused sandwich panels where the tooling surface is reconfigured to a concave shape. This will be done under the influence of diaphragm reinforcement, infusion pressure, and forming speed. It has become clear that a reinforced diaphragm reduces out-of-plane wrinkle displacement at the cost of residual stress. The effect of forming speed and infusion pressure on out-of-plane wrinkles is considered to be insignificantly small under the testing conditions as described in this work. For future research it is suggested to look in to reducing frictional forces and the application of tensile stresses to improve formability and panel quality.