Modeling, Estimation and Control of Polymer Composite Processing

Work is being done to better understand, monitor, and control the processing of thermosetting polymer composites. The heat transfer and kinetic behavior of a prototype batch processing system have been modeled to improve our understanding of the process. To provide a method by which to monitor extent of reaction, the key processing variable of the system which cannot be measured, these models are implemented in an Extended Kalman Filter algorithm. The ability to monitor extent of reaction through state estimation allows for a better understanding of the state of the system during cure and thus provides an opportunity for processing consistency. To achieve this goal, control of the batch time of the process and servo control based on extent of reaction of the composite during cure are considered.