The resin infusion is a manufacturing technology usually applied to produce structures made of composite materials widely employed in automotive, marine and aerospace industries. This process consists on the injection of a polymeric resin in a closed mold composed of porous medium and non-porous channels, which facilitates the resin propagation along the mold domain. The main purpose here is to show that Constructal Design can be applied to guide the design of this kind of process. More precisely, it is investigated the influence of geometry of a two dimensional resin flow in I and T-shaped nonporous channels intruded into a rectangular plate composed of a porous medium over resin time injection along all domain, mimicking an infusion process. The I-shaped channel has one Degree of Freedom (DOF) while T-shaped channel has three DOFs. The other degree of freedom for both problems is the ratio between the height and length of the porous plate. For all simulations the ratio between the channel and plate volume is constant (Ö = 0.05). The conservation equations of mass and momentum for the resin-air mixture and one equation for transport of volumetric fraction of resin are solved with the Finite Volume Method (FVM). The interaction between the phases is treated with the method Volume of Fluid (VOF) and resistance of porous medium is taken into account with Darcy¡s law. Results showed that Constructal Design improves nearly 140 % and 139 % in resin time injection for I and T-shaped channels without formation of voids inside the plate domain. The best shape achieved with I-shaped channel is that one with higher penetration into the porous plate, as expected. However, for T-shaped channel an intermediate configuration led to the best results, contrarily to what was noticed for previous studies of cavities where the best shapes are obtained when the simple and bifurcated branches have the highest penetration inside the high resistance domain.
Geometrical evaluation of a resin infusion process by means of constructal design / Magalhães, Glaucileia M. C.; Lorenzini, Giulio; Nardi, Maurício G.; Amico, Sandro C.; Isoldi, Liércio A.; Rocha, Luiz A. O.; Souza, Jeferson A.; Dos Santos, Elizaldo D.. - In: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEAT AND TECHNOLOGY. - ISSN 0392-8764. - 34:Special Issue 1(2016), pp. S101-S108. [10.18280/ijht.34S113]
Geometrical evaluation of a resin infusion process by means of constructal design
LORENZINI, Giulio;
2016-01-01
Abstract
The resin infusion is a manufacturing technology usually applied to produce structures made of composite materials widely employed in automotive, marine and aerospace industries. This process consists on the injection of a polymeric resin in a closed mold composed of porous medium and non-porous channels, which facilitates the resin propagation along the mold domain. The main purpose here is to show that Constructal Design can be applied to guide the design of this kind of process. More precisely, it is investigated the influence of geometry of a two dimensional resin flow in I and T-shaped nonporous channels intruded into a rectangular plate composed of a porous medium over resin time injection along all domain, mimicking an infusion process. The I-shaped channel has one Degree of Freedom (DOF) while T-shaped channel has three DOFs. The other degree of freedom for both problems is the ratio between the height and length of the porous plate. For all simulations the ratio between the channel and plate volume is constant (Ö = 0.05). The conservation equations of mass and momentum for the resin-air mixture and one equation for transport of volumetric fraction of resin are solved with the Finite Volume Method (FVM). The interaction between the phases is treated with the method Volume of Fluid (VOF) and resistance of porous medium is taken into account with Darcy¡s law. Results showed that Constructal Design improves nearly 140 % and 139 % in resin time injection for I and T-shaped channels without formation of voids inside the plate domain. The best shape achieved with I-shaped channel is that one with higher penetration into the porous plate, as expected. However, for T-shaped channel an intermediate configuration led to the best results, contrarily to what was noticed for previous studies of cavities where the best shapes are obtained when the simple and bifurcated branches have the highest penetration inside the high resistance domain.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
