Smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation of dual-scale flow during resin transfer molding

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics is a Lagrangian meshless particle method, which can be applied to the modelling of complex flow in molding simulation. In the present work, firstly, by comparing the results of smoothed particle hydrodynamics and volume-of-fluid simulation for micro-scale flow within the fiber tow, the feasibility of smoothed particle hydrodynamics to simulate the flow in porous media was demonstrated. Secondly, the dual-scale flow in the dual-scale fiber preform during resin transfer molding was investigated using smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation. The resin melt was modeled as fluid particles, and the fiber preform was regarded as dual-scale porous media depicted by fixed boundary particles. The smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation described the evolution of the flow and the formation of the void. The effects of several factors on the size of the void were also studied. The results showed that the void size increased with the increase of vertical inter-tow dimension while decreased with the increasing resin velocity and viscosity.