Fully 2 D flow modeling of resin infusion under flexible tooling using unstructured meshes and wet and dry compaction properties

This article presents a model to simulate the RIFT process for complex 2 1/2D geometries in advance. Compaction and permeability experiments were carried out for two types of preform. A significant difference between dry and wet preform compaction was observed. The model takes both into account and by doing so, the general assumption, that the RIFT process can be modeled as a quasi-static process, becomes invalid. Therefore, a fully transient model is proposed, including the preform compaction flux. Experiments were carried out to validate the model. It was found that using the wet and dry preform properties leads to a good prediction of the height distributions, flow front positions and filling times.