Experiment for improving the manufacturing process of composite material made serpentine pipe parts using ceramic lost foam mold

Nowadays, composite materials are widely used in high-strength and low-weight parts, such as airborne structures, military equipment, and sports devices. Since most of the serpentine pipe parts have the requirements of one-piece forming and high strength, the material of serpentine pipe parts is still mainly metal. However, the parts cannot be easily separated from the metal molds after autoclave curing is always a difficult problem in the manufacturing process, which results in failed products. The autoclave process is often long and expensive. Therefore, improving its manufacturing yield rate is very important. To solve this problem, this study employs a ceramic lost foam mold to replace the metal mold used in the autoclave process. By adjusting parameters of autoclave and modifying the curing processes in different experiments and experienced several failed experiments, workable manufacturing processes and parameters are finally obtained such that the composite material made serpentine pipe parts are successfully produced. This study investigates the causes of failed products and corresponding solutions. Moreover, the current study executed process reproducibility experiments to verify the reproducibility of the proposed method. Experimental results determine workable manufacturing processes and parameters. The results not only facilitate the production of composite material made serpentine pipe parts but also significantly reduce the production cost and increase the throughput.