Fiber Volume Fraction Influence on Fiber Compaction in Tapered Resin Injection Pultrusion Manufacturing
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Fiber Volume Fraction Influence on Fiber Compaction in Tapered Resin Injection Pultrusion Manufacturing N. B. Masuram 1 & J. A. Roux 1 & A. L. Jeswani 2
# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract Liquid resin is injected into the tapered injection chamber through the injection slots to completely wetout the fiber reinforcements in a resin injection pultrusion process. As the resin penetrates through the fibers, the resin also pushes the fibers away from the wall towards the centerline causing compaction of the fiber reinforcements. The fibers are squeezed together due to compaction, making resin penetration more difficult; thus higher resin injection pressures are required to effectively penetrate through the fibers and achieve complete wetout. Fiber volume fraction in the final pultruded composite is a key to decide the mechanical and/or chemical properties of the composite. If the fiber volume fraction is too high, more fibers are squeezed together creating a fiber lean region near the wall and fiber rich region away from the wall. Also, the design of the injection chamber significantly affects the minimum injection pressure required to completely wet the fibers. A tapered injection chamber is considered such that wetout occurs at lower injection pressures due to the taper angle of the injection chamber. In this study, the effect of fiber volume fraction on the fiber reinforcement compaction and complete fiber wetout for a tapered injection chamber is investigated. Keywords Pultrusion . Fiber volume fraction . Resin viscosity . Fiber compaction . Fiber wetout
1 Introduction Resin injection pultrusion (RIP) is a very economical composite manufacturing process for uniform cross-section composites. In the resin injection pultrusion process, liquid resin is injected through the injection slots located on either side (top and bottom) of the tapered injection chamber walls. The main goal is to penetrate the resin through the fiber reinforcements and reach the center of the fiber bed to obtain completely wetted fibers before reaching
* J. A. Roux [email protected] 1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS 38677, USA
2
OSRAM SYLVANIA, Danvers, MA, USA
Appl Compos Mater
the exit of the injection chamber. A minimum injection pressure is required for the resin to penetrate through the fibers; this resin pressure also pushes the fibers away from the chamber walls causing fiber compaction. Compacted fibers are difficult to penetrate and thus affect complete wetout achievement. Researchers in the past have modeled the resin injection pultrusion process. Jeswani and Roux [1] developed a 3D finite volume model to simulate resin flow through the fiber reinforcement in the RIP. Mitlapalli et al. [2] and Ranga et al. [3] further investigated the effect of varying the injection slot location, multiple injection slots, chamber length and pull speed on the resin flow in tapered resin injection pultrusion. Other researchers [4, 5, 6, 7] studied the various aspects of the pul
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