A study on the determination of in‐plane permeability of fiber preforms

Abstract One of the parameters most frequently used in modeling and designing the mold filling process is the permeability of fibrous preforms. To obtain radial propagation of a viscous polymer into a homogeneous orthotropic porous medium, an approximate solution is derived and its results are compared with numerical ones obtained from boundary element method (BEM). A simple and direct procedure incorporating approximate solution with experimental data has been proposed to determine the principal in‐plane permeabilities of the reinforcements. A scheme is also suggested in order to increase the accuracy in the determination of degree of anisotropy. The effect of resin injection type on permeability is investigated through the experiments.