The Effect of Product Size on the Pulling Force in Pultrusion

In the present work, pultrusion of a composite rod is simulated for various part thicknesses using the finite element method. The pultrusion process set-up is taken from literature in which the temperature and the degree of cure evolutions inside the rod were measured. The predicted temperature and degree of cure profiles in the three dimensional (3D) thermo-chemical analysis are found to agree well with the measured data. The contact pressure between the part and the heating die is calculated using a mechanical contact formulation in the 2D mechanical process model for 9 different part thickness values. Using the contact pressure distribution along the die, the process induced pulling force is predicted. For the simulated cases, a non-linear relation is found between the total force and the product size