Non-isothermal Mold Filling and Curing Simulation in Thin Cavities with Preplaced Fiber Mats

Abstract

A numerical model for non-isothermal mold filling and curing simulation in thin cavities with preplaced fiber mats was developed based on the control volume method. Both lumped temperature system (i.e. local thermal equilibrium between the resin and the fiber) and unlumped temperature system (i.e. thermal non-equilibrium locally) were considered. A Lagrangian coordinate system was used in the flow front region to improve the energy transfer calculation. Several molding simulation results were presented to show the effect of fiber mat presence (in the mold cavity) on the inlet pressure and temperaturedistribution.

3D Numerical simulation of non-isothermal resin transfer molding filling process using unstructured tetrahedron mesh

“…Some simple models were developed by previous researchers [1][2][3][4][5][6] , including 2D flow model. This method was so easily turned out that it was widely applied even though the results could be inapplicable for the actual process.…”

Infiltration condition and mouldability diagram in resin injection moulding

“…of equation (5.11) evaluated at the infi ltration front (i.e., in a point in which the void ratio is constant in time) vanishes. This occurs when The following estimates are obtained for the infi ltration velocitẏ 22) and for the infi ltration front…”

“…Referring to Kamal and Sourour [20], Lin et al [22], Sourour and Kamal [34], I use the following specifi c expression for the isothermal cure rate of a thermosetting resin (a general purpose unsaturated polyester, see Kamal and Sourour [20] for details)…”

Control Volume Finite Element Methods for Flow in Porous Media: Resin Transfer Molding

“…This type of approach was first presented by Wang and others and was adopted in the case of thin shell injection molding [5]. Fracchia was the first to apply the CVFEM to simulate the RTM process [6] and other researchers also followed this approach [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. The application of these methods generate several commercial software: RTM-FLOT ( no longer supported ), PAM-RTM, MyRTM and LIMS.…”