Epoxy/Glass Resin Injection Pultrusion Simulation

Abstract

Injection pultrusion is a continuous process for manufacturing composite materials. To produce good quality parts it is essential that complete wet out of the reinforcement fibers is achieved in the injection chamber. To achieve good wet out of the fibers, knowledge of the magnitude of the injection pressure is quite important. The present work presents the impact of pull speed, fiber volume fraction, resin viscosity and compression ratio (taper) of the injection chamber on resin fiber wet out within the injection chamber for epoxy/glass rovings composites. The recommended injection pressures for complete wet out are predicted for specified sets of processing parameters. Darcy's law for flow through porous media is employed to simulate the pressure field and flow field for the fiber/resin system corresponding to injection pultrusion. Different permeability models1,2 were used to determine the transverse permeability and the longitudinal permeability employed in the numerical simulation. The governing equations were solved employing the finite volume method to predict the resin pressure field, resin velocity field, and resin moving flow front.