Cure Monitoring of Composites Based on Embedded Fiber Bragg Gratings

Cure-induced strain is produced inevitably during the fabrication of the composite. To measure the strain, undamaged methods such as using fiber Bragg grating(FBG) sensor are employed. In this paper, nine unidirectional carbon fiber-reinforced polymer(CFRP) laminates are autoclaved produced, with FBGs embedded in different layers through the thickness (0-layer, 5-layer, 10-layer and 13-layer). The experiment measures the difference of the FBGs' Bragg wavelengths before and after the cure which is linearly relevant to the cure-induced strain, to explore the distribution of strains through the thickness. The experimental results indicate a certain strain in neural plane of approximately 370 mu epsilon under the designed size of the laminates. The results also show that the cure-induced strains in different layers through the thickness are less than 1000 mu epsilon even including all errors, however they do not display distinct regular in thickness direction. Moreover, through the FBG sensors and the thermocouples, the cure process with the strain and temperature variations is understood well. The result verifies that the cure-induced strain is mainly generated at the end of the cure when the temperature cools down.