Simulation of reactive liquid composite molding - Using an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach

The control-volume finite element method (CVFEM) has been used widely to si mulate the mold filling process in polymer processing because it is more us er friendly and more robust than the conventional finite element or finite difference methods. However; using lower order interpolation functions in C VFEM may result in significant numerical errors. This is especially true fo r convection-diffusion problems with a changeable source term as in reactiv e liquid composite molding (LCM). In this study, an Eulerian-Lagrangian app roach is proposed where art Eulerian coordinate system is used to solve the velocity field, while the chemical species balance and the energy balance are based on a Lagrangian coordinate system. This approach is used to simul ate the non-isothermal LCM process.