One‐dimensional heat transfer study of a fiber‐reinforced wind epoxy composite system in vacuum assisted resin transfer molding process

To investigate the influence of curing behavior of a wind‐epoxy resin in vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) process, numerical analysis of the heat transfer study of VARTM process was established to characterize temperature distribution in one dimension by directly solving heat equation and was compared with the result of experiment. Differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) was applied to test curing kinetic parameters of the epoxy system, which was required to evaluate internal thermal source and analyze heat transfer equations. Two models, such as nth order curing model and autocatalytic model, were established to solve the heat transfer equation. Combining the theoretical results with nth order curing model and experiment, it can be known that in early stage, temperature distribution correlates well with the experiment results due to the dominant chemical‐controlled reaction, while great discrepancy appears in the latter stage due to diffusion‐controlled reaction taking over. The result of the heat equation solved by autocatalytic model correlates well with the experiment results. POLYM. COMPOS., 35:1031–1037, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers