RESIN FLOW THROUGH FIBER BEDS DURING COMPOSITE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES .2. NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF NEWTONIAN FLOW THROUGH IDEAL AND ACTUAL FIBER BEDS

Proper description of the resin flow through fibrous media is an important input to the modeling of composite manufacturing processes. Based on our conclusions in a recent review of pertinent literature (see Part I, this issue), Newtonian flow through ideal cylinder arrangements has been analyzed and measured. The analytical and numerical solutions agreed well with both our own experimental observation and those of others. Experiments with actual carbon fiber beds revealed significant deviations from ideal bed behavior. These deviations include dependence of the permeability on the nature of the permeant and the applied pressure difference, both of which make questionable the use of the Blake-Kozeny-Carman (BKC) equation to describe flow in real carbon fiber beds. Experiments that simulate the autoclave process by featuring combined permeation and consolidation of fiber beds have yielded additional dependencies of the permeability on process characteristics, such as the consolidation load and the original resin-rich areas within the fiber beds.