Evaluation of Laminate Quality for Out of Autoclave Manufacturing for a Complex Shaped Crew Door

This paper summarizes a industry-academic collaborative project to evaluate Out-of-Autoclave (OOA) prepreg material and its behavior during processing of complex parts. This was done by manufacturing two crew door demonstrator parts; one made from traditional epoxy autoclave cure prepreg while the other was with OOA prepreg. The goal was to evaluate the main differences between manufacturing with OOA prepreg versus standard prepreg material. The results from this study showed the impact of using sharp radii and difficult corners for both processing methods. Ultimately, this project established the capability to manufacture a part with OOA material that was of similar quality to the part manufactured with the traditional epoxy prepreg material.