Estudo numérico do processo de infusão de resina líquida (LRI) utilizando malha de fluxo

Abstract

The present work is dedicated to numerically study problems involving the Liquid Resin Infusion (LRI) process in thick composites. This technique uses fibers to obtain polymeric composites that can be applied in various lines of the industry and engineering. In this way, there is a great interest in improving this process to obtain a final product with physical and mechanical properties that meet the requirements of the current market. This study aims to analyze the flow of the resin inside the mold and to optimize the geometry, from the length of the flux mesh and the relationship between the permeabilities Kxx/Kzz. The flow mesh is a high permeability fabric and is employed during the LRI molding process to facilitate infiltration of the resin through the fibrous area. Numerical simulations were performed in OpenFOAM free software and the creation of the geometry and the mesh in the GMSH. The finite volume formulation of OpenFOAM was used for the discretization of the transport equations describing the resin flow inside the mold and the treatment of the interface between the two fluids (resin-air) is solved by the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method. In this paper, results for a Kxx/Kzz ratio and different flow mesh lengths were presented. By the presented results, one can find a way to generalize the study, and thus, to obtain the ideal size of the flow mesh for any length of mold.