Carbon Foam Tooling for Aerospace Composites

Mihnea S. Anghelescu, M. Khairul Alam,

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701

ABSTRACT

Carbon foam is now being investigated for use as a composite tooling material since it can
be tailored to be a low cost, durable, light-weight material with low CTE, and has cure process
compatibility with aerospace composites. These foams have received increased attention in the
aerospace industry because they can now be produced with a wide range of thermo-mechanical
properties, including low CTE, and higher service temperatures than polymer foam. This paper is an
analytical study of the processing for a simple composite part on a carbon foam tooling. The curing
of the composite part is simulated by using a combination of thermal and mechanical modeling. The
curing is accompanied by development of residual stresses. The deformation due to these stresses is
then simulated by the model.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, an important aspect of composite fabrication for aircraft and spacecraft is the
attempt to manufacture increasingly larger components, including fuselage sections, as a one-piece
composite part. This, in turn requires larger tools and the weight of the tool may become an issue.
Consequently, lightweight materials would be preferred to accomplish this task. This is one of
several factors that have made carbon foams a candidate for composite tooling material.
A factor that has been clearly identified as playing a key role in process induced stress
development and deformations in fiber reinforced composites during autoclave curing is the effect
of tooling. The thermal and mechanical properties of the tooling and the mechanical interaction
between composite part and tooling will influence the curing process; the effect is complicated by
geometrical features of the part. The mismatch between coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) of
the composite part and tooling has been identified as an important contributor to process induced
residual stresses developed during autoclave manufacturing [1].
To predict the thermal history and mechanical stresses that occur during the manufacture of
composite parts, numerical models are being developed using finite element techniques [1, 2].
Numerical and analytical modeling makes it possible to predict process induced residual stresses
accumulated during matrix curing and the deformations that result when the cured composite part is
removed from the tooling. The factors that are responsible for composite part deformation (warpage
and spring-in) need to be evaluated and sensitivity analyses carried out in order to identify the
optimum values that would ensure the best geometrical and dimensional stability.
Metals have been traditionally used as tooling materials for composite processing and among
those, steel and aluminum alloys are the most popular. However, the weight of metal tooling
becomes an issue for large components. Aluminum is lighter than steel but has a much higher CTE.
It exhibits a good heat up rate and it can be easily machined. To overcome this drawback, nickel
based alloys such as Invar 36 have been introduced (see Figure 1). However, it is very expensive

1
and has a slow heat up rate. Due to its higher cost, Invar 36 is used only for some particular
applications of advanced composites to aerospace structure such as skin wings [3]. Figure 2 shows a
tooling for a large composite part for an airplane structure.

30

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Figure 1. CTE of different tooling materials [4, 6, 13]

Carbon fiber reinforced epoxy laminates have also been used as composite tooling. They are
made by laying up composite laminae on a master tool followed by curing in autoclave. They also
have the advantage of being light with a good heat up rate but their use is limited by the fact that the
matrix may crack after repeated thermal cycles in autoclave [3]. Cloud and Norton [5] describe a
type of low cost tooling for composite materials (LCTC) made of a layer of syntactic epoxy resin
molded over an aluminum core. This type of tooling system has the disadvantage of having a CTE
almost as high as aluminum (see Figure 1).

Figure 2. Tooling for large composite parts [4]

2
 The idea of using carbon based materials as tooling for composite structures is not new.
Burden has discussed [6] the properties that make monolithic graphite appropriate for composite
tooling by emphasizing its good CTE matching with carbon fiber composites, high thermal
conductivity, low thermal mass and good stability at high temperatures. However, monolithic
graphite bulk density is still high enough to create weight problems for large tooling.
Over the last decade, there has been a strong emphasis on the synthesis and applications of
carbon foam. These foams are being considered for several applications in the aerospace industry
because they can now be produced with a wide range of thermo-mechanical properties [7] which
make them attractive for applications as stiffener inserts, sandwich structures, and thermal
management. One of the new potential applications is its use as a composite tooling material since it
can be tailored to be a low cost, durable, light-weight material with low CTE, and it has cure
process compatibility with aerospace composites. An SEM picture of this foam is shown in Figure
3 (a). A 3D rendering of the foam structure is shown in Figure 3 (b). Thermal and mechanical
analyses of such carbon foams were carried out in [8]. By applying finite element method at
microstructure level of the foam the authors were able to evaluate thermal and mechanical behavior
of carbon foam and to determine bulk thermal conductivity and bulk elastic modulus.

(a) (b)

Figure 3. (a) SEM picture [Source: AFRL] and (b) solid modeling of carbon foam

Besides having a CTE that matches very closely the CTE of carbon fiber reinforced
composites, carbon foam allows for tailoring its thermal and mechanical properties according to
specific application requirements. Carbon foam can be produced with a wide range of porosities. By
increasing the porosity of the foam the bulk density will decrease. By applying appropriate heat
treatment (carbonization followed by graphitization) the thermal conductivity of the foam can be
made to exceed 200 W/m°C [7]. This would provide a reduced thermal mass and consequently, a
good heat up rate. Figure 4 shows a tooling made of carbon foam.

3
 Figure 4. Carbon foam tooling made of GRAFOAMTM
Source: GrafTech International Ltd.

The present research work is intended to give a comparison of process induced stresses and
deformations that result when traditional tooling materials are replaced by carbon foam.

COMPONENT MATERIALS

The composite material system used to test the model is a AS4/3501-6 prepreg with a fiber
volume fraction v = 0.6 . AS4 is a continuous, high strength, PAN based carbon fiber produced by
Hexcel Corporation and 3501-6 is a typical aerospace grade epoxy resin. This type of prepreg has
been widely used for making advanced composite structures for aerospace applications. Overall, the
composite material is assumed homogeneous and transversely isotropic. The thermal and
mechanical properties of the composite material are given by the combination of the constituents’
properties. Tooling material is assumed homogeneous and isotropic.

THERMO-CHEMICAL MODEL

During autoclave curing the thermal behavior of a carbon fiber reinforced epoxy resin
composite is subjected to two different thermal processes: the heating provided through thermal
convection in the temperature controlled autoclave environment and the internal heat generated by
the chemical reaction of the thermosetting polymer. The temperature distribution in composite part
during autoclave curing can be found by solving transient conduction heat transfer equation with
internal heat generation

∂T ∂ 2T ∂ 2T ∂ 2T dc
ρc p = k x 2 + k y 2 + k z 2 + ρ( 1 − v )H R (1)
∂t ∂x ∂y ∂z dt

where ρ and c p are the composite density and specific heat, T is the composite temperature, k x , k y
and k z are the composite thermal conductivities in x , y and z directions, v is the fiber volume
fraction in the prepreg, c is the degree of cure of epoxy resin and H R is the ultimate heat of
reaction of epoxy resin.
The degree of cure of a thermosetting polymer at time t is defined as the ratio of the heat of
reaction released up to time t to ultimate heat of reaction

4
 H (t )
c=
HR

and lies between 0 for a completely uncured polymer and 1.0 for a fully cured polymer. The rate of
degree of cure for 3501-6 epoxy resin, as reported by Lee et al. in [9], is used in this study to model
the curing rate and determine the degree of cure.
For the thermal model, the initial conditions at every point in the composite is assumed to be

T = T0 and c = 0 at t = 0

A convective boundary condition is used at the surface of the composite exposed to

autoclave environment, with h as the convection heat transfer coefficient. A convection heat
transfer coefficient of 140 W/m2°C was assumed based on the autoclave pressure [10]. A perfect
thermal contact between composite part and tooling material was assumed during autoclave curing.
In this preliminary study, the autoclave environment pressure and temperature are assumed
to follow a typical pressure-temperature cure cycle [1] as shown in Figure 5. Thermal properties of
composite material as shown in Table 1 can be calculated from thermal properties of individual
components [11]. The thermal properties of tooling materials are shown in Table 2. Thermal
properties of carbon fiber, epoxy resin and tooling material are assumed to be constant during the
autoclave temperature-pressure curing cycle.

Table 1. Thermal properties of AS4/3501-6 prepreg and its components [9, 11]
Property AS4 Carbon Fiber 3501-6 Epoxy Resin AS4/3501-6 Composite
ρ (kg/m )3
1790 1260 1578
c p (J/kg°C) 712 1260 887
15.7 (longitudinal)
k (W/m°C) 26 0.167
0.687 (transversal)
H R (J/kg) - 473600 -

Table 2. Thermal properties of different tooling materials [12, 13]

Property Steel Carbon foam
ρ (kg/m )3
7833 560
c p (J/kg°C) 434 710
k (W/m°C) 60.5 0.3

5
 200 1200

180 1100

160 1000

140 900

Temperature (°C)
120 800

Pressure (KPa)
100 700

80 600

60 500

Temperature
40 400
Pressure

20 300

0 200
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Time (min)

Figure 5. Pressure-temperature typical cure cycle for AS4/3501-6 [1]

A 2-D version of the thermo-chemical model was implemented in the general purpose finite
element computer code ABAQUS and a user subroutine was written in order calculate the internal
heat generation and the degree of cure of composite material. It was assumed that the z dimension
of the composite part is much longer than the other two dimensions, so that the thermal and degree
of cure gradients in this direction are very small and can be neglected.

STRESS-DISPLACEMENT MODEL

The time-dependent mechanical behavior of epoxy resin can be described using linear
viscoelasticity. The mechanical behavior of carbon fiber can be described using linear elasticity.
Under these assumptions it is common in literature to model the composite material as a linear
viscoelastic material. The constitutive equation of a linear anisotropic viscoelastic material
undergoing changes in temperature and degree of cure, in integral form is [1]

d (ε kl (t' ) − εkl (t' ))

t
σij (t ) = ∫ Cijkl (c ,T ,t − t' ) dt' i , j , k ,l = 1,2 ,3
−∞
dt'

where σij are the stress components, Cijkl are the composite material stiffness matrix components,
ε kl are the total strain components, t is the current time and t' is the past time. The material
stiffness Cijkl has a strong variation with time, temperature and degree of cure.
Assuming that the linear anisotropic viscoelastic material exhibits thermorheologically
simple behavior at constant degree of cure, a reduced time ξ , which combines together the time,
temperature and degree of cure is introduced in the following equation [1] to determined σij :

d (ε kl (t' ) − εkl (t' ))

t
σij (t ) = ∫ Cijkl (ξ − ξ' ) dt' i , j , k ,l = 1,2,3
0
dt'

6
 The thermo-chemical strain takes into account the effect of thermal and chemical
expansion/shrinkage of linear viscoelastic material

εkl = α kl ΔT + βkl Δc

where α kl and β kl are thermal and respectively, chemical expansion/shrinkage coefficients.

The mechanical behavior of the epoxy resin changes from a viscous fluid to a viscoelastic
solid as the curing process advances. The relaxation modulus of a thermoreologically simple
viscoelastic material can be modeled using an assembly of n Maxwell elements in parallel. The
mathematical formulation is a Prony series with n terms [14]

− ξ (c ,T )

[ ]
n
E (c ,ξ ) = E (c ) + E (c ) − E (c ) ∑ wi (c )e
∞ 0 ∞ τi (c )

i =1

where E 0 and E ∞ are the unrelaxed and respectively, relaxed elastic modulus of viscoelastic
material and wi and τi are the weight factor and respectively, the relaxation time of the i th
Maxwell element. The weight factors and relaxation times used in this study are shown in Table 3.
Following the approach of White and Kim in [2] we assume that the relaxation behavior of
the composite material follows the same thermorheologically simple behavior as its polymer matrix
material in pure state. Under this assumption, the relaxation behavior of the composite material can
0 ∞
be written in terms of its unrelaxed and relaxed stiffnesses Cijkl and Cijkl

− ξ (c ,T )

( )∑ w e
n
Cijkl (ξ ) = C∞
ijkl + C 0
ijkl −C ∞
ijkl i
τi ( c )

i =1

Table 3. Weight factors and relaxation times for 3501-6 epoxy resin [14]
i τi (min) wi
1
1 2.92·10 0.059
3
2 2.92·10 0.066
3 1.82·105 0.083
7
4 1.10·10 0.112
5 2.83·108 0.154
9
6 7.94·10 0.262
7 1.95·1011 0.184
12
8 3.32·10 0.049
14
9 4.92·10 0.025

The unrelaxed and relaxed composite material stiffnesses can be calculated using
mechanical properties of AS4/3501-6 prepreg components in Table 4. The properties of the tooling
material are summarized in Table 5.

7
Table 4. Mechanical properties of AS4/3501-6 prepreg components [2, 14, 15]
3501-6 Epoxy Resin 3501-6 Epoxy Resin
Property AS4 Carbon Fiber
Unrelaxed Relaxed
E1 (GPa) 206.8
3.2 0.032
E2 = E3 (GPa) 20.68
ν12 = ν13 0.2
0.35
ν 23 0.3
G12 = G13 (GPa) 27.58
1.185 0.01185
G23 (GPa) 6.894
α1 (1/°C) -9·10-7
5.76·10-5
α 2 = α 3 (1/°C) 7.2·10 -6

β1 = β 2 = β3 0 -0.01695

Table 5. Mechanical properties of different tooling materials [12, 13]

Property Steel Carbon foam
E (GPa) 210 3.5
ν 0.3 0.3
α (1/°C) 12·10 -6
2.3·10-6

SIMULATIONS AND RESULTS

The following simple composite part geometry was analyzed in order to assess carbon foam
performance as a composite tooling material: a 16-ply composite laminate bended at 90° with the
fibers oriented in the 2-direction (see Figure 6). This laminate is expected to deform after removing
from tooling. The composite part geometry is: thickness of 2 mm, inner radius of 5 mm and length
of the straight section of 30 mm. Taking advantage of the system symmetry, just half of the
geometry is analyzed by applying appropriate boundary conditions on the symmetry line. The
curing process of the composite part was analyzed using two different tooling materials and the
results are compared in terms of residual stress and deformation. Perfect bonding between tooling
and composite part is assumed.

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 Symmetry Line
1

Composite Part Composite Part

Tooling
Tooling

(a) (b)

Figure 6. (a) Solid model and (b) finite element discretization of 16-ply composite laminate
bended at 90° on convex tooling

It can be noticed from Figure 7 that there is much higher stress (compressive) in case of
curing the composite part on steel tooling in comparison with carbon foam tooling. The maximum
absolute value of stress from the steel tooling case is 245 MPa vs. 82 MPa (35.5 ksi vs. 11.9 ksi) for
the case with carbon foam tooling. During the initial stage of the cure cycle most of the stresses
relax due to the highly viscoelastic behavior of the material. However, in the final cool down stage
of the curing, because of the high positive CTE of the steel, the tooling shrinks and does not allow
the composite (with a small negative CTE in this particular simulation) to expand. This results in
high compressive stresses in the composite laminate for the case of the steel tooling. Such a stress
tends to produce a delamination in composite part. The same behavior would occur even if the CTE
of the composite part is positive, as long as it is much lower than the CTE of the tooling. In contrast,
there is very little stress in the straight section of the composite part for the case of the carbon foam
tooling because the CTEs of the materials match better. Stress is mostly concentrated in the curved
part of the composite when using carbon foam tooling, but at a much lower magnitude than when
using steel tooling.
After removing from tooling a significant amount of process induced stress is still “locked”
inside the composite part. From Figure 8, the maximum stress in the part after removing from the
tooling was seen to be 177 MPa (25.7 ksi) when using a steel tooling in comparison with only 21
MPa (3 ksi) for the case of the carbon foam tooling.
The displacement of the end of the straight section of the composite part is about double in
case of steel tooling (0.44 mm) in comparison with carbon foam tooling (0.21 mm) as shown in
Figure 9. This displacement is the result of the spring in of curved section of the part superimposed
with the warpage of straight section of the part.

9
 1 1

2 2

(a) (b)

Figure 7. Stress distribution along fiber before removing the composite part from tooling for
(a) steel tooling and (b) carbon foam tooling

1 1

2 2

(a) (b)

Figure 8. Stress distribution along fiber after removing the composite part from tooling for
(a) steel tooling and (b) carbon foam tooling

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 (a) (b)

Figure 9. Strain distribution after removing the composite part from tooling for
(a) steel tooling and (b) carbon foam tooling. The displacements are scaled 5 times.

CONCLUSIONS

The simulations results have shown that carbon foam has the potential to perform better than
steel when used as tooling material for processing advanced composite materials. This gives carbon
foam a significant advantage because it is also a much cheaper material and easier to machine.
Different tooling configurations need to be analyzed in order to get a more comprehensive
evaluation of carbon foam performance as composite tooling. In future work the following is
intended to be analyzed in terms of spring-in angle and warpage:
(a) curing of a 16-ply composite laminate bent at 90° on a concave tooling. This composite
part will be identical with the one presented in this study. The intention is to compare the curing of
composite part on convex and concave carbon foam tooling.
(b) curing of flat composite laminates with plies laid-up at different orientation angles
(stacking sequence) on different tooling materials, including carbon foam.
(c) a comparison of carbon foam vs. Invar 36 for different tooling geometry and composite
stacking sequence.
(d) since carbon foam is weaker than metals, evaluation of stresses in complex and large
tooling made with carbon foam will be carried out.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by GrafTech International Ltd.
and use of finite element software ABAQUS provided by Ohio Supercomputer Center for this
research work. Suggestions and comments were received from Mr. D. Dickson of Boeing
Commercial Airplanes and Mr. D. Miller of GrafTech International Ltd.

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