Author(s)

D. Dinescu, H. Sol, K. Hoes

Abstract

The simulation of the resin flow through a porous medium is a very important aspect for the design of a high – performance composite part and needs accurate input data - in this case the permeability of the preform. However, the permeability measurement requires a laborious procedure, which cannot be considered nowadays as being standardised. A new method for tie identification of the fibre reinforcement permeability in the Resin Transfer Moulding process for composite materials has been implemented in a user - friendly computer software. The method belongs to the category of inverse methods, which allows the estimation of model parameters. The comparison between the experimental and the computed parameters is used as convergence criteria in tie iterative inverse technique. The paper presents the permeability tensor calculation (the unknown input parameter) and the conditions that have to be imposed on the software in order to obtain an accurate result. The rapid identification is assured both by a fast mathematical model and by a new sensor - based set - up which can perform the measurement of the flow front arrival times ten times faster than a traditional procedure using a mold with a transparent upper half.

Keywords