Trapped Rubber Processing: High Performance/ High Rate Composite Processing

Purpose and goal

Create an accurate thermomechanical material model of an elastomeric polymer for use in computational simulations of advanced trapped rubber processing. Advanced trapped rubber processing of polymer matrix composites has the potential to be a more efficient and sustainable manufacturing method with compared with standard high-performance composite manufacturing methods due to the reduced tooling and heating requirements.

Expected results and effects

One of the key outcomes of this project is that the experimental set up is quite concise consisting of only two experiments. This opens the possibility to conduct a number of rubber material trial studies for new trapped rubber materials in a feasible way. Another key outcome is that current commercial solvers can give a reasonable initial approximation of a simple isotropic elastomer behavior in the experimental case developed and potentially in manufacturing scale trapped rubber processing.

Planned approach and implementation

The initial plans for the design of experiments and simulation method was fairly good. The design and implementation was completed with only a few testing iterations, while the simulation and modeling had more iterations due to the complexity of the material. A more sensitive test for thermal expansion had to be included later in the project due to the sensitivity of the approach to this specific data set. The resulting procedure is still very concise.