Application of Microwave Heating in Aerospace Composite Processing

Abstract

Microwave heating technology regarded as a highly time and energy efficient heating technique which recently has acquired attention in aerospace composite manufacturing. Capability of offering exceptional advantages including volumetric and selective heating makes the microwave heating attractive alternative over the conventional highly time and energy consuming autoclave processing. However due to the complexity of interaction mechanism of electromagnetic field and composite materials, applying microwave ovens on an industrial level requires comprehensive experimental and numerical investigation to determine and predict the materials behavior during the curing process. On laboratory scales great potentials of microwave heating in terms of time and energy saving have been proven through several studies, a concise review over these studies is presented in this paper.