Analysis of heat transfer and resin reaction

An Eulerian-Lagrangian approach is used to simulate mold filling, heat transfer and resin reaction in liquid composite molding (LCM). The simulation results are compared with those from several non-isothermal molding filling experiments based on a non-reactive and a reactive fluids. Heat transfer between the fluid and the fiber reinforcement is investigated using both one-equation and two-equation models. The effective thermal conductivity due to thermal dispersion, and the local heat transfer coefficient between the fiber and the resin are evaluated by fitting the numerical solution to the experimental data. The prediction of the two-equation model is shown to be in good agreement with the experimental results. Thermal dispersion effect needs to be included in the energy equation in order to predict the temperature profiles accurately.