Estimation of Thermal Properties in Carbon/Epoxy Composite Materials during Curing

A new procedure for the transient estimation of the thermal properties of thermoset composite materials during curing is presented. This estimation procedure in volves the minimization of a least squares function composed of calculated and measured transient temperatures in which the calculated temperatures are determined numerically using finite differences. An experimental design is presented in which the relationships between the thermal properties and both temperature and degree of cure can be deter mined. The estimation procedure is demonstrated using hypothethical data obtained from a simulation of the experimental design. The estimated thermal properties using this simulated data were in excellent agreement with the thermal properties used to generate this data.