Adaptive control and on-line permeability estimation of resin transfer molding for composite materials

This paper presents an adaptive controller for injection flowrate or pressure control in resin transfer molding with on-line parameter estimation. In particular, the true values of the unknown permeability of the fiber preform are obtained by a composite parameter estimation algorithm. The controller based on Darcy's law is able to regulate the flowrate or injection pressure by using the sensor information of the injection conditions. The parameter estimation converges to the true values of the permeability with accurate statistics even in the presence of sharp changes and random variations in permeability.