Process-Induced Residual Stress in Composite Materials
Summary
Composite materials often incur residual stresses during manufacture owing to complex interactions among thermal, chemical and mechanical phenomena. As thermosetting or thermoplastic resins cure, exothermic polymerisation, chemical shrinkage and evolving viscoelastic properties combine with spatial temperature gradients to produce locked-in stresses. These residual stresses can provoke warpage, microcracking and reduced fatigue life, challenging dimensional control and structural integrity across aerospace, automotive and energy sectors. Experimental techniques such as rheometry, dynamic mechanical analysis and non-destructive scanning have been paired with high-resolution finite-element models to characterise stress distributions and predict deformations. Virtual process design frameworks now enable optimisation of cure cycles and tool configurations to minimise distortions, thereby reducing costly trial-and-error iterations. Understanding process-induced residual stress is essential for the reliable production of lightweight, high-performance composite components and for extending service life under demanding loading and environmental conditions.
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Process-Induced Residual Stress in Composite Materials publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in process-induced residual stress in composite materials across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Residual stress: Stress retained within a material after removal of external loads or constraints following manufacturing processes, arising from non-uniform deformations.
Cure kinetics: Rate processes and mechanisms governing the chemical reactions during resin polymerisation.
Degree of cure: Fractional progress of the polymerisation reaction in a thermosetting resin, determining material properties.
Viscoelasticity: Combined elastic and viscous mechanical response of polymers that depends on time, temperature and state of cure.
Thermal gradient: Variation of temperature across a component that induces differential expansion and contributes to residual stress.
References
- A Review on the Mechanical Modeling of Composite Manufacturing Processes. Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering (2016).
- Multi-objective optimisation of the cure of thick components. Composites Part A Applied Science and Manufacturing (2017).
- Evaluation of cure shrinkage measurement techniques for thermosetting resins. Polymer Testing (2010).
- Measuring and understanding cure-dependent viscoelastic properties of epoxy resin: A review. Polymer Testing (2022).
- Numerical Analysis of Curing Residual Stress and Deformation in Thermosetting Composite Laminates with Comparison between Different Constitutive Models. Materials (2019).
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