Resin Flow in Fiber Preformed by Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding with Flexible Tools

Vacuum assisted resin transfer molding, as a sub-branch of RTM is a method of manufacturing composite specimens. Considering the industrial development of this method, different modified techniques are designed to improve its performance. Among these techniques, using a half flexible mold is regarded as an important method. In this work, dominant equations of resin flow through the mold in polar coordinates are solved analytically. Based on this approach, closed-form solutions have been presented for different parameters such as thickness variation of preformed fiber, resin pressure, resin velocity and fiber volume fraction as functions of two variables, namely, time and the distance from injection port. After verification of the approach employed in this work, the results are presented. Important parameters influencing the quality and the rate production are studied in detail.