Improvement of Heating Uniformity by Limiting the Absorption of Hot Areas in Microwave Processing of CFRP Composites

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites are integral to today’s industries. Curing or consolidation are vital processes for manufacturing CFRP components. Microwave processing has many advantages compared with conventional processing technologies using ovens or autoclaves; however, the uneven temperature distribution caused by the non-uniform microwave field has a significant influence on the quality of the cured products. In this study, we propose a new idea to solve this problem, i.e., limiting the absorption of hot areas. Under such circumstances, cold ones can catch up with them more easily. To adjust the absorbing capability of the CFRP laminate, periodically arranged metallic resonance structures supported by a dielectric spacer are introduced on its surface. The dielectric spacer, made of epoxy matrix and strontium titanate particles, is designed to possess a dielectric constant positively related to temperatures. In this situation, the microwave absorption (2.45 GHz) of the metal-dielectric-CFRP configuration is changed from 97.6% at room temperature to 55.9% at 150 °C continuously. As a result, a reduction of 43.1% in maximum temperature difference and 89% in standard deviation has been achieved.