The successful manufacture of thick composites is challenging, since the highly exothermic nature of thermoset resins and limited temperature control make avoiding the onset of detrimental thermal gradients within the composite relatively difficult. This phenomenon is mainly caused by exothermic heat reactions. The so-called Michaud's model has been largely used in the literature to reduce the gap between experience and simulation with regard to the effective prediction of the temperature cycle in these processes. In this work, another solution is proposed to simulate the curing process for thick composites, namely preheating the resin to activate the curing reaction before resin injection into the mold. A good agreement between the experiment and the simulation is found. Moreover, in order to minimize the thermal gradient in the final composite, the thermophysical properties of the fiber and the torque (temperature, time) of the Plate have been varied leading to interesting results.

The successful manufacture of thick composites is challenging since the highly exothermic nature of thermoset resins and limited temperature control make avoiding the onset of detrimental thermal gradients within the composite relatively difficult. This phenomenon is mainly caused by exothermic heat reactions. The so-called Michaud's model has been largely used in the literature to reduce the gap between experience and simulation with regard to the effective prediction of the temperature cycle in these processes. In this work, another solution is proposed to simulate the curing process for thick composites, namely preheating the resin to activate the curing reaction before resin injection into the mold. A good agreement between the experiment and the simulation is found. Moreover, in order to minimize the thermal gradient in the final composite, the thermophysical properties of the fiber and the torque (temperature, time) of the Plate have been varied leading to interesting results.