Composite repair to aluminum alloy plate by photoinitiated and thermal curing

Photoinitiated curing of resin can be finished in a few minutes, or even seconds. However, the mechanical and adhesion strength of composite cured only by photoinitiation is weaker than the thermally cured. The dual curing, thermal and photoinitiated, mechanism was used to a wet-layup repair process. In view of the field emergency repair, the infrared lamp was used as thermal source to facilitate thermal curing. The effect of content of reactive diluent, photoinitiator and curing agent on repair efficiency was investigated. Effect of the infrared irradiation time, which affected the degree of thermal curing, was studied. Test results showed that an appropriate degree of thermal curing was important, which could affect the succeeding photoinitiated curing. In a short repair time, a simple surface pretreatment and three layers of glass fabric could restore break strength of the damaged specimen to 86.7% of the pristine according to the dual curing method.