Precision Heated Tooling for OOA Curing of Thin-Ply Composites

Touchstone produced carbon foam (CFOAM), graphite foam (GFOAM) composite core tool materials for evaluating heat transfer characteristics. In addition a high in-plane heat spreader was evaluated along with fiber reinforced bismaleimide (BMI) composite that is the tool surface.nbsp; The heat source were 300 and 600 W flexible heaters manufactured from glass reinforced silicone and polyimide.nbsp; The thermal results were collected and submitted to Clemson University and used for validating a 2D model that they developed.nbsp; After completing the flat panel test a graphite core having DCB geometry was constructed and evaluated for thermal gradients.nbsp; It was concluded that future development work would be on a tool having GFOAM core and BMI composite surface.nbsp; The technology readiness level for Phase I started at TRL-1 and ended at TRL-5 based upon a BMI-GFOAM system and that has bottom mount heaters.nbsp; It is proposed in Phase II to build a segmented 12ft span DCB self-heating composite tool prototype that may be used to validate the technology and provide thin ply composite booms with corrugated geometry in support of NASA LaRC thin-ply composites research.