Research On Microwave Curing Process Of Epoxy Resin And Composites

Microwave curing is a fast curing technology which generates heat to make resin’s chemicalcross-linking reaction. This technology has several advantages over conventional thermal processingmethod, including uniform, fast, easy control, energy saving and so on. In order to generalize the ap-plying of microwave repair technique in composite wind blades, this paper studies the microwavecuring process of the epoxy resins and their composites. The main work includes the following:For implementing automation of microwave curing equipment, the paper uses the PLC to realizethe real-time accurate control of process parameters, just like output power, heating time, intermittenttime and heating cycle, refering to process control requirements under microwave curing.According to the characteristics of microwave heating, three different epoxy resin curing systemsare screened out to investigate. Then, each optimized formula of epoxy resin systems is obtained byregarding curing efficiency as evaluation standard, and through the design of orthogonal test to inves-tigate the effects of microwave curing process parameters. Above all, the comparison of mechanicalproperties of cured products in different curing methods also has been done. In summarization, firstly,microwave curing greatly reduces the curing time; Secondly, under the promise of avoiding burningor imploding phenomenon, the process should be chose as high output power, long heating time, longheating cycle and short break to improve curing efficiency. Thirdly, tensile properties of epoxy po-lyamide systems’ casting bodys in microwave curing method are close with thermal curing products,but the bending properties reduce by almost20%. The other two systems’ performance is overall de-cline, and its influence factors are various.To research microwave curing characteristics of each resin system’s composite, microwave cur-ing process is determined with the reference to microwave curing process parameters of resin systems.After that, through the mechanical property test of fiber reinforced composite laminated plate made bytwo fifferent curing methods, the paper finds that tensile properties and bending properties of E51epoxy+650polyamide system’s composite are little different in these two curing methods, but for theother two systems, their properties in microwave curing reduce in varying degrees. The results alsoshow that tensile strength and tensile modulus of Epoxy resin E51+MTHPA system composite withmicrowave curing are down34.2%and22.1%respectively, reflecting poorer bonding performance,which is not suitable for acting as matrix of repair material.