ANALYSIS OF 2-REGIONAL FLOW IN LIQUID COMPOSITE MOLDING

This study investigates the two-regional flow in Liquid Composite Mold ing (LCM) with emphasis an the race tracking phenomenon. An equivalent permeability is introduced to describe the flow capacity in the fiber free region. A lumped permeability is also used to further simplify t he flow modeling by averaging the flaw across the flow direction. Both the equivalent permeability approach and the lumped permeability appr oach were verified with experiments. It is found that they are capable of modeling the race tracking effects in LCM.