Abstract
Permeability plays a key role in liquid composite molding processes for mold and process design. A new technique is developed to measure permeabilities for anisotropic fiber preforms with a high fiber content. In this method, four pressure transducers are used to measure the pressure distribution in a radial flow. In this way, permeabilities in the different directions can be determined. The racetracking effects, the permeability of the high permeability layer used in vacuum assisted RTM and the equivalent permeability in the channels used in SCRIMP were also investigated in this study. The measured fiber preform permeability, resin viscosity and kinetic models were used in a 3D flow model to simulate the liquid composite molding process for aerospace applications.