Fiber consolidation in the filament winding process: Modeling with undulating channels

Abstract

In this work, we have studied the consolidation of unidirectional continuous fibers in the filament-winding process. A system of undulating channels was used to describe the randomly aligned fiber arrays. The forces acting on the fibers were discriminated into a shear force due to resin flow and a hydrodynamic squeezing force caused by fiber compaction. Continuously varying structures of the fiber bed were monitored. Effects of the initial fiber arrangements, winding tensions and fiber modulus were investigated. Controlled temperature effects are also reported.