Simulating the resin flow and stress distributions on mold tools during compression resin transfer molding

Abstract

Compression resin transfer molding (CRTM) is an effective process for the manufacturing of composite parts with large size and high fiber content. The analysis of the resin flow and stress distributions can only be performed by directly solving the coupled flow/deformation equations, but it is difficult to handle the complicated preform deformation models and geometry models; therefore, the simulation precision and application range are extremely limited. In this paper, an alternative approach is introduced to overcome the above problems, in which the preform deformation and the accompanying resin release during the secondary compaction phase are calculated in an additional element associated with each unit of the discretized model geometry instead of solving the coupled governing equations directly, so the complex compaction models can be adopted. Three simulation examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and capability of the above numerical approach on velocity-controlled, force-controlled 3D CRTM processes.

Modeling and 3D Simulation of the Mould Compression and Resin Flow for Force-Controlled Compression Resin Transfer Moulding

“…Mamoune et al [21] developed a new numerical modeling of CRTM process with mould compression under a force, and it was applied to a series of parametric studies, considering the effects of part size and fiber volume fraction on the mouldfilling time. Yang et al [22] introduced an alternative approach to simulate the resin flow and stress distributions during mould-filling process, which can be used in force-controlled CRTM, while it is also only effective in thin part moulding simulation. From the above analyses, we can find that the previously proposed methods for the mould-filling simulation of force-controlled CRTM are just valid for 1D/2D resin flow or thin part moulding, when the resin flow front is irregular on the thickness direction during thick part moulding, none of them can be adopted.…”

Homogenized free surface flow in porous media for wet‐out processing

“…Meanwhile, the control volume finite element method (FEM) has also been explored to model the process . Together with the control volume FEM, the volume‐of‐fluid idea was implemented by Voller and Chen and Yang et al Some software has then emerged based on this technology for composites processing problems, eg, RTM‐Worx and PAM‐RTM . Alternatively, flow front migration has been modeled using the level‐set method combined with the extended FEM.…”

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation of dual-scale flow during resin transfer molding

“…1 The resin transfer molding (RTM) is increasingly used to manufacture FRP composite structures, especially for the large and complex parts. 2,3 The fiber preform in the RTM is viewed as porous media containing dual scales as shown in Figure 1: the fiber tows on the macroscopic level and fiber filaments (within the tow) on the microscopic level. The quality of the RTM products strongly depends on the resin flow in the dual-scale fiber preform, and the air void is one of the main defects of products.…”