Effect of Shear, Compaction and Nesting on Permeability of the Orthogonal Plain-Weave Fabric Preforms

Abstract

Permeability of fabric preforms and its changes due to various modes of the fabric distortion or deformation as well due to fabric layers shifting and compacting is one of the key factors controlling infiltration of the preforms with resin within the common polymer-matrix composite liquid-molding fabrication processes. While direct measurements of the fabric permeability generally yield the most reliable results, a large number of the fabric architectures used and numerous deformation and layers rearrangement modes necessitates the development and the use of computational models for the prediction of preform permeability. One such model, the so-called lubrication model, is adapted in the present work to study the effect of the mold walls, the compaction pressure, the fabric-tows shearing and the fabric layers shifting on permeability of the preforms based on orthogonal balanced plain-weave fabrics. The model predictions are compared with their respective experimental counterparts available in the literature and a reasonably good agreement is found between the corresponding sets of results.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADA595473

Entities

People

  • K. M. Chittajallu
  • Mica Grujicic
  • Shawn Walsh

Organizations

  • Clemson University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Chemistry
  • Composite Material Fabrication
  • Composite Materials
  • Differential Equations
  • Distortion
  • Fabrication
  • Fluid Flow
  • High Pressure
  • Lubrication
  • Materials
  • Materials Processing
  • Measurement
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Polymer Matrix Composites
  • Pressure Distribution
  • Pressure Gradients
  • Resin Transfer Molding

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Agricultural Chemistry/Soil Science
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Metallurgy