Alotaibi, H, Abeykoon, C, Soutis, C et al. (1 more author) (Cover date: March 2 2023) A Numerical Thermo-Chemo-Flow Analysis of Thermoset Resin Impregnation in LCM Processes. Polymers, 15 (6). 1572. ISSN 2073-4360
Abstract
This paper presents a numerical framework for modelling and simulating convection–diffusion–reaction flows in liquid composite moulding (LCM). The model is developed in ANSYS Fluent with customised user-defined-functions (UDFs), user-defined-scalar (UDS), and user-defined memory (UDM) codes to incorporate the cure kinetics and rheological characteristics of thermoset resin impregnation. The simulations were performed adopting volume-of-fluid (VOF)—a multiphase flow solution—based on finite volume method (FVM). The developed numerical approach solves Darcy’s law, heat transfer, and chemical reactions in LCM process simultaneously. Thereby, the solution scheme shows its ability to provide information on flow-front, viscosity development, degree of cure, and rate of reaction at once unlike existing literature that commonly focuses on impregnation stage and cure stage in isolation. Furthermore, it allows online monitoring, controlled boundary conditions, and injection techniques (for design of manufacturing) during the mould filling and curing stages. To examine the validity of the model, a comparative analysis was carried out for a simple geometry, in that the numerical results indicate good agreement—3.4% difference in the degree of cure compared with previous research findings.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | liquid composite moulding; CFD; filling stage; curing stage; cure kinetics; rheology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Mechanical Engineering (Leeds) > Institute of Engineering Thermofluids, Surfaces & Interfaces (iETSI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 23 May 2023 13:47 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 23:21 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/polym15061572 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:199484 |