Investigation of process induced residual stresses and deformations for industrially pultruded parts having UD and CFM layers

Pultrusion process is one of the most effective manufacturing techniques for production of composite materials having constant cross-sectional area. Pultruded composite profiles are getting increasingly popular in construction industry as well as in wind energy due to their high strength-to-weight ratio, low maintenance cost and high corrosion resistance. Recently, pultruded profiles are foreseen to have potential for the replacement of some of the conventional materials used in the construction industry. An example of this is the increased application of structural pultruded profiles for bridge constructions. A consequence of the enhanced usage of pultruded profiles requires detailed understanding of the mechanical behavior as well as the failure mechanism of the profile. Therefore, in order to improve the product quality and the degree of reliability of the pultruded products, a series of processing design challenges must be tackled such as process induced residual stresses and distortions.