Flow of non-Newtonian liquid polymers through deformed composites reinforcements

The flow of non-Newtonian liquid polymers through fibrous reinforcements is a phenomenon which is often encountered during polymer composites manufacturing. In a previous work, we have proposed from a multiscale theoretical approach a method to model this phenomenon when the polymer can be regarded as a generalised Newtonian fluid [Orgeas et al. J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 2007; 145]. In this paper, the capability of the method is tested with power-law fluids flowing through deformed plain weave fabrics. For that purpose, the flow problem is firstly analysed at the mesoscale from numerical simulations performed on representative elementary volumes of the fabrics. The influences of both the current deformation of the fabrics and the fluid rheology on the macroscopic flow law are emphasised. Secondly, it is shown that the proposed method allows a nice fit of numerical results.