Concurrent product and process design for polymer composite parts

Composite materials have gained increasing attention in the past several years due to their superior mechanical properties and improved strength-to-weight ratio over traditional materials. Resin transfer molding (RTM) is an attractive composite processing method due to its potential for providing consistently superior parts at a lower cost than other manufacturing techniques. The RTM process involves a large number of variables that are strongly related to the system performance, for example mold filling time, and RTM product quality. The need for understanding the impact of RTM product and process design variables on part quality and process performance is crucial. This paper describe an integrated product and process design (IPPD) approach for RTM product/process design in which genetic algorithms (GA), in conjunction with the cascade correlation neural network architecture (CCA-NN), are utilized. The approach is illustrated through an example.