Analysis of flow and heat transfer in liquid composite molding

An analysis of flow and heat transfer in Liquid Composite Molding (LCM) is presented Analytical solutions for the velocity profiles including the boun dary effects and temperature distributions are derived for constant viscosi ty fluids. The heat transfer during mold filling is also analyzed numerical ly. It is found that the boundary effect has a significant influence on hea t transfer when the Reynolds number, Re-s, is greater than 1. When the Reyn olds number is less than I, the boundary effect on heat transfer can be neg ligible and Darcy's law is applicable. The results also show that the inert ia effect can be neglected during mold filling in LCM. Experiments on heat transfer with a non-reactive fluid lead to measurements of the dispersion e ffect and test of the boundary effect on heat transfer Several nonisotherma l mold filling and curing experiments on two rather different reactive syst ems lead to an assessment of the factors a model must include to capture th e curing behavior.