Curing Cycle of Thermoset Epoxy Resin: Modeling and Simulation of a Drone Body Cover Geometry to Demonstrate the Usage of a Digital Tool and Its Application in a Real Case Scenario

While large companies employ advanced techniques to simulate processing conditions and optimize manufacturing processes, small and medium-sized enterprises face challenges in implementing reliable digital tools that lead to competitiveness in the commercial market. However, the costs associated with commercial software often deter small companies from adopting digital tools, prompting them to turn to open-access alternatives that, in most cases, lack accuracy. The main objective of this work was to develop a numerical model to simulate the advanced composite material transformation process of thermoset epoxy resin curing using real geometry, demonstrating the accuracy of the developed numerical model and its potential to build a digital tool. The digital tool is developed through OpenFoam advanced customization, adapting the procedure to the real needs of the process and combining a surrogate model created using a Python routine. Data was generated from a discretized geometry of the body cover of a drone and experimental analysis. The simulations showed that the maximum temperature during the curing process significantly affects the degree of curing and that the solver's validation against the experimental data is highly accurate. These findings suggest that the developed numerical model can be successfully implemented in composite manufacturing processes as an alternative to commercially advanced simulation software in this field.