Abstract
Curing deformation is a direct consequence of resin thermal curing induced composite internal stress. The understanding of the curing process is crucial to predict the internal stress, and then effectively control the curing deformation. For this purpose, the thermal-chemical-mechanical modeling of the multi-physical process is done, and a new simulation procedure is presented. Then a new correlation analysis of the heat transfer, cure and mechanical behavior of fiber composite laminates is performed. It is shown that the temperature and curing degree distributions are inhomogeneous. The temperature of the geometrical structure center is higher than that of the surface because of the exothermic reaction and the low thermal conductivity of the composite, so are the resin elastic modulus and the resin shrinkage strain. The research is helpful for understanding the complicated thermal-chemical-mechanical relationships, and then the design of composite curing processes according to certain requirements can be implemented.