Abstract
Curing process has a great impact on molding quality of the fiber-winding composite shell. In order to improve its curing quality and efficiency, a new curing process employed the method of heating the internal metal mandrel with steam can be adopted, which is called internal curing process. This paper introduces the principle of internal curing process and establishes the mathematical models of internal curing process, adopts ANSYS and APDL to develop the 3-D transient numerical simulation program of internal curing to realize numerical simulation of temperature, curing degree and residual strain, and analyze the influence of shell thick, fiber volume fraction and film coefficient on the simulation results. Taking the cylinder shell as an example, numerical simulation and experiment are carried out. This research provides theory basis and analysis method for the design, simulation and parameter optimization of internal curing process.