Abstract
Vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) is one of the manufacturing technique that is viable for production of fiber reinforced polymer composite components suitable for aerospace, marine and commercial applications. However the repeatable quality of the product can be achieved by critically fixing the process parameters such as Vacuum Pressure (VP) and permeability of the preform. The present investigation is aimed at studying the effect of permeability for production of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polyester (GFRP) components with consistent quality. The VARTM mould is made with an acrylic transparent top cover to observe and record the resin flow pattern. Six layers of randomly placed glass fiber under five different vacuum pressures VP1 = 0.013, VP2 = 0.026, VP3 = 0.039, VP4 = 0.053 and VP5 = 0.066 MPa were studied. The laminates produced by this process under the above mentioned conditions were characterized with ASTM D procedures so as to study the effect of these process parameters on the quality of the laminate. And as mentioned there is a considerable effect of permeability on the impact strength and the void content in the laminates under different vacuum pressures. SEM analysis of the impact tested fractured GFRP composites showed the bonding of fiber and matrix.
Highlights
In aerospace industry, a conventional manufacturing method like auto clave process is replaced because of high quality laminates produced by Vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) process [1]
Injection cycle will be much longer, because of which parts manufactured using of carbon fiber mats in comparison with either chopped or woven fiberglass mats with the same porosity or fiber content [9].The application of vacuum pressure in RTM process removes moisture and other contaminates which increase the quality of the laminate [10]. the reduction of void content to 2% or less is the greatest challenge faced in ht-VARTM as it is required for aerospace applications and it done by various process modifications, the maximum vacuum pressure will minimize the voids and will effect the quality of the laminate [11,12,13,14]
The permeability of resin mixture and voids volume percent obviously increased with increase in vacuum pressure from VP1 to VP5 in the cases of the composites experimentally studied in this work
Summary
A conventional manufacturing method like auto clave process is replaced because of high quality laminates produced by VARTM process [1]. In VARTM process for accurate process model and resin flow, permeability of fiber preform is the key parameter that as to be determined experimentally [2,3]. An experimental set up was fabricated to determine permeability by varying volume fraction of fiber [4].Flow visualization study was used to measure permeability [5]. Injection cycle will be much longer, because of which parts manufactured using of carbon fiber mats in comparison with either chopped or woven fiberglass mats with the same porosity or fiber content [9].The application of vacuum pressure in RTM process removes moisture and other contaminates which increase the quality of the laminate [10]. The woven keneaf /epoxy composite impact strength is superior and interfacial adhesion of fiber and matrix is observed from the SEM analysis [15]
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