A numerical model to analyse the temperature distribution in cross-ply CFRP during induction heating

Heat generation in CFRP (carbon fibre reinforced plastic) with electromagnetic induction can result in several benefits to manufacturing and production. However, during induction heating of anisotropic materials such as CFRP, the temperature distribution depends on electrical and thermal conductivity in different directions. This article presents a numerical model for computing the temperature distribution and heating power distribution in cross-ply CFRP plates, based on unidirectional plies, during induction heating. The unidirectional layers are represented as homogeneous and anisotropic domains in which electrical and thermal conductivity are represented with tensors. The electrical and thermal properties were measured and used in the numerical model to compute the temperature distribution in a number of CFRP-plates with different fibre volume fractions and layer thicknesses, and then the numerical model was validated by recording the temperature distribution with a thermographic camera during induction heating of the CFRP-plates. The experiments showed good agreement with the results from the numerical model.