An identification and control strategy for a liquid composite molding process

Liquid Composite Molding (LCM) is a manufacturing process that involves the injection of resin into a mold containing fiber preform and the subsequent curing. Control of the resin injection is an obvious way to increase process performance. Variability in the properties of the fibers makes open-loop approaches problematic. This paper presents a controller for a 1-D analog of the LCM process. The purpose is to demonstrate that a straightforward estimation and control scheme can abapt to unmodelled variations in the properties of the mold, and enforce a prescribed filling behavior. The scheme is applied to a simulation of an LCM process.