Stochastic simulation based approach for statistical analysis and characterization of composites manufacturing processes

Composite manufacturing processes have more part-to-part variations compared with metal manufacturing processes due to larger raw material and processing variations. To improve part quality consistency, understanding and characterizing the stochastic behavior of composite manufacturing processes is critical. This paper introduces a methodology for statistical analysis and characterization of resin transfer molding (RTM) processes using a stochastic simulation method.The paper analyzes the sources of the uncertainties, quantifies the magnitudes of the uncertainties by error propagation theory, and characterizes the statistical properties of the permeability values. The paper further proposes a stochastic simulation procedure for RTM processes. Normal distribution and Weibull distribution were utilized as the statistical models for representing the measured fiber preform main region permeability values for one-dimensional flow and two-dimensional flow experiments. Based on the statistical properties of the permeability, a Monte Carlo simulation based RTM flow simulation approach was suggested.