A preform deformation and resin flow coupled model including the cure kinetics and chemo-rheology for the VARTM process

Abstract The present paper deals with preform deformation and resin flow coupled to cure kinetics and chemo-rheology for the VARTM process. By monitoring the coupled resin infusion and curing steps through temperature control, our primary aim is to reduce the cycle time of the process. The analysis is based on the two-phase porous media flow and the preform deformation extended with cure kinetics and heat transfer. A novel feature is the consideration of temperature and preform deformation coupled to resin viscosity and permeability in the VARTM process. To tackle this problem, we extend the porous media framework with the heat transfer and chemical reaction, involving additional convection terms to describe the proper interactions with the resin flow. Shell kinematics is applied to thin-walled preforms, which significantly reduces the problem size. The proposed finite element discretized system of coupled models is solved in a staggered way to handle the partially saturated flow front under non-isothermal conditions efficiently. From the numerical example, we conclude that the cycle time of the VARTM infusion process can be shortened over 68% with the proper temperature control. Moreover, the proposed framework can be applied to optimize the processing parameters and check the compatibility of a resin system for a given infusion task.