| Abstract | Reduction of the process cycle time has been a major challenge faced by the ground transportation industry when introducing composite components in their design. As a result, composite material manufacturers developed innovative solutions to tackle this problem. The past decade has seen resin manufacturers produce fast curing thermoset resins that can help composite manufacturers reduce process cycle times. Currently, automotive manufacturers use the liquid composite moulding (LCM) process to produce high quality net shape automotive parts, mostly for high performance low volume luxury automobiles. However, the ground transportation industry is a cost driven industry and mass production can be extremely expensive. Among all the LCM processes available, compression resin transfer moulding (CRTM) is seen as a cost-effective solution to meet industry demands. Yet, fast curing resins pose a major challenge in producing high quality parts. Therefore, researchers have been working on process simulation to optimize CRTM for the last three decades. Even though great progress has been achieved in performing CRTM simulation, there is still a huge gap to be addressed in terms of a fully coupled simulation (heat transfer, flow and mechnical) for a large complex 3D part. Hence, this paper aims at simulating the CRTM process using a new approach introduced into the current solver of PAM RTMTM. The simulations were validated using a 3D complex demonstrator part. |
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