MOLD FILLING SIMULATION IN RTM PROCESSING OF NATURAL FIBER COMPOSITE MATERIALS. EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION.

JUAN MORAN; CANDELA RODRIGUEZ LALLI; GASTON FRANCUCCI

Kyoto

Conferencia; 13th Conference on Flow Processes in Composite Materials (FPCM13); 2016

Darcy?s law is widely used to model the fluid flow through a porous medium, and it is also extensively used in modelling flow processes in composite materials manufacturing. This law allows predicting the flow front position inside the mould cavity during the filling stage. Fluid viscosity and reinforcement permeability are the main properties involved in Darcy?s law. In contrast to synthetic fibres, the permeability of natural fibre reinforcements does not necessarily remain constant along the wetted region of the fabrics throughout the infiltration process, because the porosity can change as the fibres absorb fluid and swell. In a previous work [1], a numerical model called ?the permeability field model? (PFM), was developed to predict the mould filling stage of the RTM processing of natural fibre based composites. This model considers the fact that different regions of the wetted perform experience higher or lower fibre swelling depending on the amount of time that they have been immersed in the fluid, leading to a permeability field along the wetted fibre bed. In the present work, the validation of the PFM is presented by comparing the predicted results with those observed experimentally.