A Study on the Dimensional Stability of Interior Composite Panel Made by Vacuum Bagging and Hand Lay-Up Fabrication Method

Recently, composites are widely used for interior panel of the transportation facilities such as railway vehicle, ships and aircraft, etc. These interior composites panels are often made by vacuum bagging, hand lay-up method and autoclave, etc. In this study, we carried out tests for the evaluation of material properties of the panels under more severe conditions than real environment to evaluate the dimension stability of the interior composite panels. Two sets of panels, one made by hand lay-up method with glass mat/polyester resin (Type 1), and the other, by vacuum bagging method with epoxy prepreg/NOMEX (Type 2) are exposed to the low temperature, high temperature and room temperature. And then we measured the dimensions of the strained panels. To monitor the characteristics of cured resin, we used DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimeter). It was observed that Type 2 has higher mechanical properties and dimensional stability than Type 1.