Resin transfer molding

A computer program for controlling a resin transfer molding process, the program comprising:

• an identification module for identifying a set of possible disturbances in the process;
• a location-determining module for determining locations within a resin-transfer mold for a set of sensors such that the data for particular disturbances are significantly different from the sensor data for other disturbances;
• a decision-constructing module for constructing a set of decision trees, each of the trees having inputs from multiple ones of the sensors and having an output indicating one of the disturbances;
• and
• an action-determining module for determining at least one of a plurality of control actions, each control action ameliorating the one disturbance indicated by the output of the one decision tree.

A method of determining optimal sensor locations in a resin transfer molding process, comprising:

• establishing a plurality of nodes in a resin transfer mold;
• running M simulations for a plurality of disturbances, and a simulation with no disturbances;
• establishing a process simulation function responsive to at least one process parameter;
• and a number 1 that represents a particular iteration of the current simulation;
• establishing an objective function equaling the summation, ranging from simulations 1 to M, of a weighting factor multiplied by the difference between the process simulation functions with the disturbances and the process simulation function for the simulation with no disturbances;
• specifying an acceptable range for the objective function output;
• eliminating those nodes which do not have an objective function output value within an acceptable range;
• and
• assigning a plurality of sensors to the remaining nodes.