Analysis of mechanical performance and energy consumption of microwave cured GFRP composites: A low-energy footprint manufacturing process

Environmental sustainability is one of the prime objectives of the manufacturing industries. To accomplish this focus, industries are developing low-energy consumption manufacturing process, which reduces production cost and the environmental impact. The GFRP composites find applications in various structural applications, such as aircraft, wind turbine blades etc. owing to their lightweight, high strength, and stiffness. In this study we explored manufacturing of glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite using vacuum-assisted resin infusion microwave curing (VARIMC) and thermal curing. This study investigated the role of curing parameters (microwave power and cure time) on mechanical performance of the GFRP composites. Analysis of energy consumption during VARIMC and thermal curing were also carried out in this work. The mechanical properties of GFRP composites are observed to be better at 540 W microwave power with cure time of 720 s compared to 8100 s for thermal curing (2000 W). The VARIMCed GFRP samples exhibited better or comparable properties than thermally cured samples. The VARIMC process utilized about 1.186 MJ/kg of energy, which was almost 36 times less than the energy consumed by thermal curing (43.2 MJ/kg). (c) 2023 CIRP.