Curing Process Simulation of Fiberglass-Reinforced Plastic (FRP) Pipes

Abstract

In order to improve production efficiency and product quality of epoxy fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) pipes, the manufacturing system adopted internal heating curing process for FRP pipes was developed. This article introduces the mechanical structure and operating principle of the machine tool and establishes the coupled mathematical model of the temperature and curing degree during the curing process of filament winding FRP pipes. The numerical simulation program was developed by finite element software ANSYSL. The influence of pipe wall thickness, fiber volume fraction and convection coefficient on temperature and degree of cure distribution during curing process is simulated, which provides theoretical basis for the optimization of the curing process of FRP pipes.

Keywords:

• ANSYS
• Cure
• Curing control
• Curing degree field
• Curing mechanism
• Curing model
• Curing process optimization
• Epoxy FRP pipes
• Finite element method
• Internal heating
• Mechanical structure
• Numerical simulation
• Steam heating
• Temperature field
• Winding machine

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was supported by Innovation Fund of Scientific Research of Harbin Science and Technology Bureau Grant 2006RFXXG015 to Bo You, and by the project of Youth Fund of Hei Longjiang Province Grant QC08C66 to Jiazhong Xu.