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Liquid composite molding techniques are increasingly applied for the manufacturing of fiber-reinforced plastic components for civil, aerospace, and automotive applications. Being the preform impregnation a key step during the process, resin viscosity should meet the precise requirements. Opportune resin preheating increases its fluency, thus enhancing the impregnation and saturation flow through the fabric and reducing the mold filling time. This paper explores the application of microwave technology for resin preheating. The integration of an online microwave preheating system within a demonstrative resin infusion facility is described and the effects of preheating on the infusion time are discussed. Parallel-plate dielectric sensors were embedded into the mold to track the unheated and preheated resin flow through the fiber preform. The obtained results highlighted the effectiveness of online microwave heating to reduce the time required for the impregnation of the dry fiber reinforcement.

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The quality of Liquid Composite Molding (LCM) manufactured components is strictly related to the fibrous preform impregnation. As Darcy’s law suggests, the resin flow is influenced by the pressure gradient, geometrical features of the reinforcement, and resin viscosity. The former two parameters are dictated by the requirements of the component and other constraints; therefore, they are hardly modifiable during the process. Resin preheating increases its fluency, thus enhancing the impregnation and saturation flow, and reducing the mold filling time. In the present work, a microwave heating system has been integrated within a vacuum bag resin infusion process, to analyze the effect of the online preheating on the fiber impregnation. To monitor the resin flow a dielectric sensors-based system is used. Results from resin infusion tests conducted with and without the resin pre-heating were compared: the outcomes indicated an advance of approximately 190 s of the flow front when microwave heating is applied with respect to the unheated tests.

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In recent years, the concepts of industry 4.0 are widely spreading in many different sectors, from agriculture to home automation, from transportation systems to manufacturing processes. One of the pillars of this concept is related to the use of robotic cells. The focus of the present work is the robotic automated layup of dry fibrous preforms to be employed in liquid composite molding (LCM) processes. In particular, the article describes a software tool developed to simulate the automated placement and layup of fiber fabrics and tissues on complex shape molds by means of a robotic system. The tool has been coded in Matlab language. An end-effector has been appositely designed for the fiber layup and it has been included in the model. The simulation provides as output the path generation and the configuration of the robotic arm and of end effector along the entire layup process. The implemented code has been compared with the commercial software RoboDK.

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