PGD analysis of the heating of a composite laminate during ultrasonic compaction

Abstract

Compaction of composite layers just after placing them is a key requirement for the new out-of-autoclave in-situ curing techniques. A solution proposed for this task is the use of ultrasonic compactors. In fact, the ultrasonic vibration over the laminate induces a viscous heating of the resin that becomes less viscous and lets the air bubbles escape. The numerical study of this heat generation and distribution within the laminate implies several modeling problems because of its different dimensions (10 cm for the width of the prepreg tape and 0.01 mm for its thickness) and its two scales of time (10 seconds for the process and 1O m icroseconds for the vibration). The Proper Generalized Decomposition (PGD) is a suitable technique to overcome this kind of problems. The formulation and implementation of the PGD for the problem of viscous heating inside composite laminates is presented in this work.