Investigation on the Influence of Pressure Terms in a Volume-Averaged Energy Balance in the Modelling of Liquid Composite Moulding Processes

The growing use of composite materials has generated interest in improving and optimising composite manufacturing processes such as Liquid Composite Moulding (LCM). In LCM, dry preforms are placed in a mould and impregnated with the matrix material. The efficiency of filling the moulds can be improved by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) filling simulations during the design of the mould. As part of an on-going effort to develop a CFD tool for the simulation of LCM processes, a volume averaged energy balance equation has been derived and implemented in a custom OpenFOAM solver. The energy balance is implemented in a custom OpenFOAM solver with and without the pressure terms for comparison with results from RTM experiments. It is found that the pressure terms do not significantly influence the results for LCM processes.