Determination of the Thermal Dispersion Coefficient During Radial Filling of a Porous Medium

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Abstract
Resin Transfer Molding is one of the Liquid Composite Molding processes in which a thermoset resin is infiltrated into a fibrous porous media in a closed mold. To reduce the curing time of the resin, the mold may be heated, influencing other filling parameters such as the resin viscosity. Analysis of the non-isothermal effects during filling will help to understand the manufacturing process. One of the issues of non-isothermal filling in porous media is the variation of the velocity profile at the micro scale level, which as it is averaged, cannot be included in the convective term. To account for it, the thermal conductivity tensor is modified and a thermal dispersion coefficient Kd is introduced to model the micro convection effects. In this paper, we explore the temperature profile under non-isothermal conditions for radial injection during Resin Transfer Molding in order to determine the thermal dispersion coefficient. An approximate solution is derived from the series solution and validated with a numerical method. Experiments using carbon fibers and polyester resin were conducted. The thermal dispersion coefficient is determined by comparing experimental results with the steady state analytical solution. The comparison between radial and linear injection results shows that the same degree of dispersion is present in isotropic fibrous porous media.

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