Composite processes

Accelerating innovation in composite materials manufacturing processes to balance cost, throughput and performance

Composite materials offer great potential for designing lightweight, high-performance structures suited to complex geometries. Their industrial deployment depends on the ability to ensure process reliability, reduce cycle times and control production costs

Processes for composite materials must also become more flexible in order to adapt to the diversity of parts, materials, production volumes and production rates. Integrating the process from the earliest stages of product design makes it possible to identify the architectures, materials, tooling and manufacturing processes that offer the best technical and economic performance.

In addition to these economic challenges, there is a need to reduce energy consumption, minimise waste and production consumables, and develop solutions for reuse or recycling

To maximize the industrial impact of its research, our team is building relationships with the professional and scientific community in the field of composites:

At IRT Jules Verne, the R&D work carried out by the Composite Processes and Materials team addresses the following challenges:

• Increasing the production rates of preforming, injection moulding, forming and assembly.
• Reducing cycle times and recurring production costs.
• Manufacturing complex, functional parts that are thick and/or large in size.
• Improving process reliability and ensuring the geometric quality and material integrity of parts.
• Developing flexible, automated and reconfigurable processes.
• To reduce material usage, scrap, production consumables and energy requirements.
• To facilitate the reuse of scrap and the use of recycled or bio-based materials.
• To develop robust assembly solutions for composite and multi-material structures.

Composite materials, parts, and structures studied at the IRT Jules Verne

Our technological activities dedicated to composite materials manufacturing processes

The team’s technology roadmap stems directly from the industrial challenges identified. The technical development of a process is combined with an economic analysis and its improvement through the integration of process requirements into product design, and the optimisation of the design of moulds, tooling and equipment. With the support of other areas of expertise within IRT Jules Verne, these activities also encompass automation, modelling, monitoring and the optimisation of manufacturing parameters.

The R&D projects and services focused on composite material manufacturing processes centre on four key areas:

• large-scale automated preforming
• liquid-phase impregnation processes
• forming and consolidation processes
• welding of thermoplastic composites

Large-scale automated preforming

Automated preforming enables the production of complex, large-scale textile preforms with greater speed, repeatability and precision. Mastering the shaping of reinforcements, combined with suitable tooling and production equipment, ensures the geometry of the preforms is correct prior to the injection or consolidation stages.

For manufacturers, automation paves the way for increased production rates and greater robustness and stability in quality, including for structural components that are difficult to handle manually. It also helps to minimise textile waste and facilitates its reintegration into the product or the process.

At IRT Jules Verne, these technologies are based in particular on an automated production line for large-scale textile preforms. They meet the needs of industrial sectors that produce complex, lightweight and large-scale composite structures, such as the aerospace, shipbuilding and wind energy sectors.

Liquid impregnation processes: thick-section infusion, RTM injection and isothermal CRTM

Infusion, RTM injection and isothermal CRTM injection-compression enable the manufacture of complex composite parts, whether thick-walled or large in size, whilst ensuring optimal impregnation of the reinforcements and the final quality of the material.

Tooling design, resin flow modelling and the automation of injection operations all contribute to ensuring reliable part filling. The industrial challenge lies in speeding up the process without compromising the quality of the impregnation and, consequently, the expected performance.

Increasing injection speeds and maintaining a controlled temperature within a closed mould optimise cycle times, reduce consumables and lower recurring production costs. In particular, the isothermal CRTM offers potential for the higher-throughput manufacture of aerospace structural components.

Forming processes: thermocompression, stamping/overmoulding and non-autoclave consolidation

Thermocompression, stamping, overmoulding and non-autoclave consolidation offer suitable solutions for the manufacture of complex, thick or large thermoplastic composite parts.

Control over heat transfer and temperature uniformity enables the material to be heated, formed and then consolidated by cooling under reproducible conditions.

Rapid, controlled heating and cooling systems can thus shorten production cycles and reduce energy consumption whilst ensuring product quality and performance.

Simulating the interactions between the mould and the material also helps to anticipate distortions, improve dimensional accuracy and design tooling based on the part’s actual behaviour. For manufacturers, these technologies reduce the risk of quality defects and facilitate the transition to non-autoclave processes, which may be less restrictive in terms of equipment and energy consumption.

Stamping and overmoulding also make it possible to integrate additional functions and metal inserts during manufacture. This approach can reduce the number of assembly operations required to produce multi-material composite parts.

Thermoplastic composites welding

Induction welding and conduction welding enable the joining of thermoplastic composites reinforced with continuous fibres, whilst minimising the need for traditional mechanical fastening solutions.

Control of the heating and cooling cycles, combined with regulation of the pressure to be applied, helps to achieve robust and repeatable welded interfaces.

Multiphysics simulation facilitates the selection of parameters and the design of tooling prior to physical testing, thereby reducing the time required for process development and optimisation.

Monitoring the welding process makes it possible to track key process parameters, detect deviations, correct them and predict the quality of the weld. This data can contribute to process qualification. For manufacturers, this control can ensure production reliability whilst increasing assembly rates.

Dynamic induction welding, in particular, offers potential for the continuous assembly of large-scale aerospace structures, such as thermoplastic fuselage components. Static conduction welding, on the other hand, is suited to the localised assembly of components and sub-assemblies.

The developments carried out by the Composite Materials Processes team at IRT Jules Verne are based on several monitored multi-technology welding platforms (conduction, induction, IR mirror). These include a welding bench capable of accommodating various fixtures, ranging from test specimen size up to demonstrators of around one metre, and a control rack to centralise the management of power supplies, sensors and safety functions, both for the bench fixtures and for the assembly fixtures of a full-scale demonstrator. This structure provides a unique framework for carrying out collaborative projects (France 2030, European programmes), industrial services and demonstrators, whilst establishing an area of activity in which IRT Jules Verne is recognised as a leading player within the French ecosystem.