Flow analysis during Resin Transfer Molding of thick structures

The Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) process is widely investigated as a powerful method to fabricate aerospace structure. So far RTM applications concern thin laminates and very little work on thick composites can be found in the literature. Nevertheless, an investigation of thick composites is necessary in order to extend the RTM advantages to primary structure. To achieve fast, repeatable and reliable process one needs to acquire some predictive modeling capability to simulate the resin flow within the mold during the injection. This capability is readily available for RTM process modeling, but it has to be extended to the fabrication of thick structures. We present experimental and numerical studies to determine a corrective factor of the preform permeability to take into account the effects of the transverse resin flow through the thickness in 2-D simulations. Numerical studies were compared with experimental cases.