Energy Efficient Solid-State Microwave Curing of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composites

In this paper we present a new set-up for curing carbon fiber composite materials realised around four solid state power amplifiers generating 250 W microwave power in the frequency range 2.4 - 2.5 GHz. This microwave curing set-up improves the homogeneity of the heating pattern by combining different standing waves in a process using an IR camera, as feedback for a machine learning based controller. We show also that the energy used for the curing process is drastically reduced in comparison with curing using conventional methods