Dry Spot Formation and Changes in Liquid Composite Molding: II—Modeling and Simulation

Abstract

Three types of dry spot changes, which have been described in Part I, are modeled in this study. Darcy's law and ideal gas law are used to model the Type I and Type II dry spot changes, while a simplified form of the two phase Darcy's law is used to model the Type III dry spot change. A computer code based on the control volume finite element method is developed to simulate the dry spot formation and changes. In order to save computation time, a coarse mesh rebalancing method is implemented in the code. Compared to the experimental results, this flow model predicts the Type I and Type II dry spot changes and the packing and bleeding process very well. It shows the right trend of Type III dry spot changes when compared to some preliminary experimental results.