Multiscale modeling of unsaturated flow in dual-scale fiber preforms of liquid composite molding I: Isothermal flows

Mold-filling simulation of unsaturated flows in LCM is important for optimizing mold design quickly and cost-effectively in the virtual space. For the first time, a true multiscale approach is developed for simulating the unsaturated flow under isothermal conditions in the dual-scale fiber-mats of RIM. To solve the coupled macro-micro equation-set, a coarse global mesh is used to solve the global flow equations over the entire domain while fine local meshes in form of the periodic unit-cells of fabrics are employed to solve the local tow-impregnation process. A multiscale algorithm based on hierarchical computational grids has been proposed to simulate the unsaturated flow in the dual-scale fiber mats under isothermal conditions. The predictions are compared with measurements for a 1-D flow experiment which indicates that the proposed approach can be used to simulate the unsaturated flow accurately through dual-scale fiber mats in LCM without the use of any fitting parameters. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.