Analysis of Flow and Heat Transfer in Liquid Composite Molding

Abstract

Abstract An analysis of flow and heat transfer in Liquid Composite Molding (LCM) is presented. Analytical solutions for the velocity profiles including the boundary effects and temperature distributions are derived for constant viscosity fluids. The heat transfer during mold filling is also analyzed numerically. It is found that the boundary effect has a significant influence on heat transfer when the Reynolds number, Res, is greater than 1. When the Reynolds number is less than 1, the boundary effect on heat transfer can be negligible and Darcy's law is applicable. The results also show that the inertia effect can be neglected during mold filling in LCM. Experiments on heat transfer with a non-reactive fluid lead to measurements of the dispersion effect and test of the boundary effect on heat transfer. Several non-isothermal mold filling and curing experiments on two rather different reactive systems lead to an assessment of the factors a model must include to capture the curing behavior.