National Research Council of Canada

Textron Innovations Inc.

Bell Helicopter Textron Inc.

Marc-André Octeau

Steven Roy

Pascal Forget

Richard Gingras

Ali Yousefpour

Marc Lauzon

Patrick Dupré

Meysam Rahmat

Simon Hind

Drazen Djokic

Jihua Chen

Patrick Dupre

A vacuum bag system (VBS) for forming pre-consolidated composite blanks has a blank enclosure for sealing around a periphery of the blank, while leaving a second side of the blank exposed, an articulated forming caul (AFC) with at least two facets, each facet effectively jointedly coupled to an adjacent facet, and having a respective, independently controlled, heater integrated with, or coupled to the facet. The VBS further has a forming enclosure for sealing around a periphery of a tool. The blank enclosure brings the blank and the facets into uniform thermal contact resistance and mechanical contact; and permits the articulated AFC to distribute thermal and mechanical load across the blank during forming, even as the facets move to align to faces of the mold.

Articulated forming caul for composite blank vacuum forming

A method of manufacturing a flexible element configured for pressing against composite material received on a mold surface of a mold during cure, including placing a porous material over the mold surface, forming a sealed enclosure containing the mold surface and the porous material, infusing a curable liquid material such as silicone in liquid form into the enclosure under vacuum and through the porous material, curing the liquid material to form the flexible element, and opening the enclosure and disengaging the flexible element from the mold. In a particular embodiment, the flexible element is a pressure pad.

Method of forming pressure pad or other flexible element for use during cure of composite materials

A method of manufacturing a monolithic component having internal wall(s), including separately placing uncured composite material on a mold parts, placing the mold parts on a support plate with a portion of the uncured composite material extending between and in contact with the adjacent mold parts, interconnecting the adjacent mold parts through a connection allowing limited relative movement on the support plate along a direction corresponding to a thickness of the uncured composite material therebetween, biasing the adjacent mold part toward each other along the limited relative movement to provide a compressive force on the uncured composite material extending therebetween, and curing the composite material to obtain the monolithic component with each internal wall being formed between adjacent mold parts. The bias causes the adjacent mold parts to move toward each other as the thickness of uncured material extending therebetween reduces during curing. A tool assembly is also discussed.

Modular tooling for manufacturing multi-cavity composite structures

Growing community of inventors

Laval, Canada

Marc-André Octeau