The investigation of bubble mobility in channel flow with wavy porous media walls

During composites processing, thermoset polymer resin is injected into network of densely packed continuous fibers with the goal of complete saturation. The formation and entrapment of gas bubbles, due to the presence of air or volatiles during processing, will create voids in the cured composite. Voids can degrade the mechanical properties and increase design risks and costs. Thus, there is a need to understand the two phase flow of resin and bubbles through channels within fibrous porous media. A two-phase flow model of a channel containing resin and gas bubbles is presented. The boundaries of the channel are porous media with sinusoidal wavy or corrugated walls, which represents the wavy nature of the porous media. This causes the change in bubble movement dynamics, due to the non-uniform pressure gradient induced by non-rectilinear walls. Parameters such as porous media permeability, channel waviness, and channel width are studied to investigate the influence of wavy porous wall effects on the two-phase flow and how these parameters may influence the likelihood of bubble entrapment. By maximizing the bubble mobility, which is the ratio of average bubble velocity to average resin velocity, one can remove the bubbles from the system before the resin cures. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.