Towards an efficient numerical treatment of the transport problems in the resin transfer molding simulation Original Research Article

Efficient liquid composites molding (LCM) processes simulation requires an efficient treatment of the advection equation governing the evolution of different process variables (volume of fluid, heat transfer, incubation time, etc.). In a previous work [J.A. García, Ll. Gascón, F. Chinesta, A fixed mesh numerical method for modelling the flow in liquid composites molding processes using a volume-of-fluid technique, Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 192 (7–8) (2003) 877–893], a second-order scheme with flux limiters was proposed for the integration of the advection equation which governs the volume fraction evolution. Due to the fact that other properties, like the incubation time, are not defined in the empty part of the mold, some numerical difficulties are found during the process updating [F. Chinesta, T. Mabrouki, A. Ramón, Some difficulties in the flow front treatment in fixed mesh simulations of composites forming processes, in: 5th ESAFORM Conference on Material Forming, Kracow, 2002, pp. 295–298]. Then the scheme described in García et al. (2003) must be modified to circumvent the difficulty just refereed. This paper describes a new flux limiter fixed mesh technique for the calculation of the incubation time and the fluid fraction in mold filling simulation of thin cavities containing a fiber reinforcement. Numerical results in two dimensions are presented in order to validate the proposed numerical strategy.