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Saturation of Fiber Tow and related issues in Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM) Process. Ajay Kumar, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, akumar@ddn.upes.ac.in Mukul Shukla, Mechanical Engineering Department, MNNIT, Allahabad; and Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa, mukulshukla@mnnit.ac.in; mshukla@uj.ac.za Abstract
There has been substantial growth in the technology of composite manufacturing using the LCM method. The RTM process was robust but was a costly affair for long composites parts due to the two sided mold requirement and also due to the number of fixture required in a RTM process. VARTM or some time also called as VI (Vacuum Infusion) is a cheap and a viable option for the big size composite parts .Vacuum infusion has improved over the last decade due to the focus and ease in operation and its ability to produce long composite parts. This has achieved a good attention of the scientist in the last decade and continues to receive the attention of the world. There are several variants of this process and most of them operate at a compaction pressure of 1 bar. There are several research groups which are involved in the advancement of this method of composite manufacturing. Some codes are now available for the simulation of the process, and some amount of automation has also been applied in this method. As in VI process one sided moulds are used and the other side covered with a plastic bag is always exposed to the atmospheric pressure, there is no solid control on the face exposed, this increases the chances of thickness variation along the length of the infusion. In the absence of proper infusion there is possibility of improper saturation leading to the dry spot formation making the composite weak at the point of dry spot. The strength of the composite manufactured by VI depends a lot on the proper design of the injection point and vents, and online control so that the preform is completely saturated with the resin before it cures. This paper investigates the evolution of this method of composite manufacturing, with the focus on the key issue of saturation of fiber in the Vacuum infusion process.

Keywords: VARTM, Tow Saturation ____________________________________________________________________________ 1. Introduction Composites are fibrous materials infused with a tough and durable plastic. Composite material is a technology that is being used to make many items in today's world stronger and lighter. These are starting to be incorporated in armours of combat vehicles and soldiers. When these panels are made in the most economical way, they are inferior to those that take much more time and money to construct. Developing a method that is fast and reliable and is critical. A controlled infusion setup must be designed to get optimized infusion. The experimental set and process which infusion is accomplished is called Vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM).In this process a vacuum pulls resin in form of a feed tube to distribute it evenly into the preform. There are different steps that must be followed to in order to run a VARTM process. A selection of material that will be infused must be acquired. Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM) has a potential advantage of relatively low cost with sufficiently high
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IJSTM, Vol. 2 Issue 4, December 2011 www.ijstm.com

Fabric Vacuum bag Top release film Distribution medium

volume fractions of reinforcement and the process can be readily applied to large-scale structures like aircraft and marine structures. Essentially, VARTM is an infusion process where vacuum draws the resin into a onesided mold. A flexible plastic bag material is placed over the top to form a vacuum-tight seal. However, for many aircraft applications, VARTM does not currently provide sufficient repeatability or control of variability. This unpredictable variability is commonly observed when processing with the traditional VARTM process. In order to produce VARTM parts of aircraft quality on industrial basis, the variability must be understood, which is possible through modeling and computer simulation of the process. 2. Brief Details of the Process and the important considerations in VARTM

Resin

Vacuum pump

Sealant tape

Bottom release film

Mold surface

Fig.1. Schematic of VARTM mould set up.

3. Working Principle In a typical wetting of fabric through VARTM process, there are two macroscopic flow fronts. The top and bottom flow fronts. The distribution flow medium which is placed on top of the fabric will enhance the resin flow and hence the top surface will get wet faster, whereas wetting of bottom surface takes more time since the resin has to flow through the thickness of the fabric, The through the thickness movement of the resin is mainly governed by the throughthickness permeability and the pressure gradient. The through-thickness permeability is one or two orders of magnitude higher than the in-plane permeability. As there will be a large difference in the top and bottom surface wetting time, there is a flow front profile across the thickness. That is, top flow front will always be ahead of the bottom flow front. Thus one could make a conclusion that if the bottom flow front reaches end of the mold, then the part is fully wet (although this is not always true, especially for complex geometries). In this way the bottom flow front data is very important in order to estimate the time to complete the infusion. 4.Issues in VARTM Most variant process of VARTM has been aimed at reducing the fill time of resin infusion through the preform during this process. SCRIMP is the most common variant of VARTM process being used in the industrial composite production. In the
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In the VARTM process, the typical lay-up sequence on the rigid mould (made of either glass, metal or composite) comprises: (i) a non porous release film, (ii) a peel ply, (iii) fabric (reinforcement) (iv) a peel ply, (v) a porous release film, (vi) flow distribution medium (to enhance the flow on top), (vii) non-porous release film, (viii) Caul plate and (ix) breather cloth are placed in that sequence. Finally, the edges are sealed using modeling clay and the whole lay-up is bagged using a vacuum bag film to a create vacuum. The schematic of VARTM mould set up is shown in Fig. 1. For purposes of simulation however, the components to be modeled would only be the fiber reinforcement, the flow distribution medium and the resin. The other components do not affect the process in any substantial way and hence need not be modeled.

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IJSTM, Vol. 2 Issue 4, December 2011 www.ijstm.com infusion process is not repeatable from one part to the next as the resin may not completely wet the fabric due to inherent variation in the woven materials or due to the slight misalignment in the fabric lay-up process. d) If the saturation of the fiber is not complete the composite structures which have resin starved regions and are discarded as the scrap, which some time increases the production cost. Tow saturation being the last to be accomplished in the VARTM process, but the most important in deciding the strength aspect of a composite as it is the prominent reason for dry spot formation in the composites. The flow front of the resin in most of the infusion process is not the real indicator of the tow saturation behind it and it is found by many researchers that the flow front already reaching the vent and the region behind that not was being completely saturated. The permeability of the tow in the comparison to the permeability of the fabric is too low some time of the order of 13-14 times less and therefore the time required for the saturation is more. Some of the researchers give special allowance for the permeability of the tow and then simulate the results. And with this new permeability the results found for the tow saturation is in good agreement of the actual fill time and infusion process. LIMS developed by the University of Delaware takes this feature into account and the simulation results are found to be in good agreement of the real infusion process. This feature of defining the permeability of the tow i.e. locally in LIMS is a great help in simulation but this cannot be done until the permeability data for a particular
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SCRIMP one key additional material is used to the layup. Highly permeable netting called as distribution media (DM) is placed on the top of the reinforcement layers to allow an easy path for the resin to move and cover the entire mould. Fig.2.The permeability of the DM is sometimes hundred times the permeability of the reinforcement, once the resin spreads entirely along the distribution media the resin needs to only infuse through the thickness of the preform, thereby drastically reducing the fill time

Fig.2. Schematic of a SCRIMP Process, it is same as VARTM if DM is removed

Tow saturation and fill permeability are the issues which need to be tackled in the different variants of VARTM. Many models are developed to predict the tow saturation and the flow front of an infusion process but they fail to exactly predict these due to some inherent disadvantages of the VARTM process, the following need to be mentioned in this context. a) The infusion process used to force the resin into the mold is limited to atmospheric pressure. b) The above aspect combined with the low permeability of the typical fabric results in an inability to completely fill the part before the resin starts to gel. c) The automation of a VARTM process is difficult as its one side is a solid mold cavity and the other side is a flexible plastic bag, so the VARTM process which is used for large size parts but for a low volume production. And due to this fact the

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IJSTM, Vol. 2 Issue 4, December 2011 www.ijstm.com vent reduces microvoids content, the intensity of transmitted light decreasing with microvoids content and as such, with unsaturation. Jillian et al. [7] studied analytically and numerically the formation of microvoids in multilayer woven fabrics. The model predicts the presence of voids in warp tows and size of voids is found to be function of the ratio between tow axial and transverse permeability. Flow within a woven or stitched fabric is driven both by viscous forces on the macroscale and capillary forces on the microscale and the formation of micro- or macro-voids is the result of the competition between these two phenomena. Lee et al. [811] carried out some experimental work to investigate the process of void formation. Investigating the impregnation of unidirectional stitched fiber mat, a processing window corresponding to a minimal void content was obtained for flow along fiber tows while it was not for flow normal to fiber tows. According to these results, at a given flow rate, three different populations of voids may be observed. (a) Only macrovoids.(b).No voids (processing window).(c) Only microvoids. B. Gourichon et.al. Through these experiments for different flow rates for automotive part composite manufacturing found that there are three zones in which the capillary and viscous forces are acting simultaneously acting with the dominance shifting from one to the other in the different zones. The nature of the void formation depends on the typical dominating force.(a) capillary force dominating region are witnessed with the microvoid formation (b) viscous force dominating region are witnessed with the microvoids formation (c) the region of completion between the capillary and the viscous forces gives
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fabric is available before the simulation, so the tow permeability of a particular fabric is a very important requirement for any simulation to be realistic. 5. Phenomenon of tow saturation and the issues. Usually, Darcys law has been used to describe the physics of flow through a fabric considered as a porous medium

Where v is the volume-averaged velocity, the pressure gradient, the viscosity and K the permeability tensor of the porous medium. Although it is valid when modeling flow in a single scale porous medium, it is no longer valid when applied to a dual scale porous medium [1]. In a dual scale porous medium, the difference in length scale between micropores (pores inside a fiber tow) and macro-pores (pores between fiber tows) are usually 2 or 3 orders of magnitude. It has been known that tows are mainly impregnated transversally [2] owing to the sequence of layers in the fabric and the global flow front position matches the macropores flow front. The direct result of this delayed impregnation is the presence of air bubbles within the fabric when resin starts exiting the mold. Different indirect experimental observations proved the existence of the unsaturation phenomenon. The microvoids formation processes has been studied [35] and this is the most critical consequence of unsaturation since voids can dramatically reduce mechanical properties of composites. As bubbles may be evacuated from the mold before resin cures, microvoids content cannot be directly linked to an unsaturation degree. Hayward and Harris [6] gave the evidence that applying a vacuum at the

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IJSTM, Vol. 2 Issue 4, December 2011 www.ijstm.com [29, 30] and by the necessity to measure the adhesion between the fibers and the matrix [3133]. The threshold pressure needed to infiltrate the liquid through the small space between parallel fibers in normal direction to their axes is given by Kaptay [13]. 6.1 Existing equations for capillary pressure According to the classical Young Laplace equation, the capillary pressure in a straight, cylindrical capillary of radius r can be written as Pc = (1) Where is the surface tension of the infiltrating liquid (J/m2 = N/m), the contact angle of the infiltrating liquid on the inner wall of the capillaries, or generally on the solid surface of the preform. The capillary pressure is a spontaneous pressure, arising perpendicular to the solid/liquid/gas three-phase line and pulling the liquid into the capillary (Pc > 0) or pushing it out of the capillary (Pc < 0). To the contrary, the threshold pressure is the minimum pressure required to start infiltration, provided that venting of the gas from the preform takes place without problems (no trapped bubbles) and friction losses and also gravity effects are neglected. By definition, the threshold pressure equals the negative of the capillary pressure: Pth = - Pc. In geometries other than cylindrical capillaries Eq. (1) can be used, if r is treated as the effective radius. Although the effective radius is quite illdefined in porous solids of random morphologies, sometimes it is used for simplicity [34, 35]. For absolutely nonwetting liquids ( = 180 ), infiltrating
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rise to an equivalent force which gives rise to minimum void content region .it also highlighted that the flow rate of injection does not have any influential bearing on the saturation of the preform and the saturation is more closely related to the void formation and void mobilization. Although all the above varies from one preform fabric to the other and the exact prediction of void formation and tow saturation is not possible but a general important observation is that the whole unsaturation grows linearly with time for 1D flow. 6. Threshold pressure of infiltration into fibrous preforms normal to the fibers axes Interfacial phenomena at the fiber/liquid/gas interface play a key role in the infiltration process. The interplay between the surface tension of the infiltrating liquid, the wetability of the fibers by this liquid and the morphological details of the preform influence the value of the threshold pressure of infiltration. The value of the threshold pressure is generally higher and therefore, it is more important for producing (metal matrix composites) compared to PMCs, (Polymer matrix composites) due to higher surface tension of liquid metals and their higher contact angle compared to molten polymers. Nevertheless, the improvement of the microstructure and physical properties of both types of composites is possible only through the better understanding of all the processes and their governing equations during the production of fiber reinforced composite materials. The importance of this question for PMCs is demonstrated by the need of surface treatment of fibers

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IJSTM, Vol. 2 Issue 4, December 2011 www.ijstm.com and taking into account Pth = - Pc, the following final equation is obtained: Pth = (4)

normal to the axes of the fibers, Clyne et al. [21] used Eq. (1) with r, taken as the half of inter-fibre spacing. Considering the infiltration of a perfectly wetting liquid ( = 0) into a porous solid, the following expression for the capillary pressure was obtained by Carman [36]: Pc,o = S. (2) Where, S is the specific surface area of the initial preform (1/m), i.e. the ratio of the solid/gas interface to the volume of the pores within the preform, before infiltration. Independently of Eq. (2), Eq. (3) was obtained on pure thermodynamic basis, supposing that the original solid/gas interface is fully replaced by the solid/liquid interface during infiltration, independent of the contact angle [37, 38]: Pc = S. (3) It can seen that in the case of perfect wetability ( = 0) Eq. (3) simplifies back to Eq. (2), and thus Eq. (3) can be considered as an extension of Eq. (2). One can also see that Eq. (3) becomes identical to Eq. (1), if the effective radius of the pores is taken equal to: r = S-1. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that the basic assumption behind Eq. (3) is not valid. In fact the original solid/gas interface is not fully replaced by the solid/liquid interface during infiltration, especially for non-wetting liquids and difficult inner morphologies of porous solid preforms [39] If the preform is made of cylindrical fibers of equal diameters D (m) and with a fiber volume fraction of Vf (Vf is a dimensionless number, 0 < Vf < 1), its specific surface area can be easily expressed as (if the ends of the fibers are neglected): S = 4Vf/D(1 -Vf). Substituting this equation into Eq. (3)

The threshold pressure in accordance to Eq. (4) is independent of fiber orientation and distribution [38]. It is found that an infinitely high pressure would be needed to achieve full infiltration in this case [38]. Actually this conclusion also follows from Eq. (4), as locally Vf 1 is taking place, and hence Pth . Eq. (4) is widespread in PMC [17,18,4446] literature However, there are at least two problems with its usage. 1. The first problem is connected with the value of the threshold contact angle (th), defined as the contact angle, below which spontaneous infiltration starts. According to Eq. (4), th = 90, as at any < 90: Pth < 0, i.e. the infiltration takes place spontaneously, without any outside pressure. This is indeed the case, when the preform is infiltrated parallel with the fibers. However, when the infiltration takes place in normal direction to the axes of the fibers, the threshold contact angle is usually lower than 90. As was shown independently by Bayramli and Powell [47] and later by Yang and Xi [48], the threshold contact angle in this case depends on fiber arrangement and on the volume fraction of the fibers and is generally lower than 45, what is in contradiction to Eq. (4). It was also shown [39] recently that in most cases the threshold contact angle is below 90, and thus Eq. (4) should be modified. Unsuccessful infiltration of a liquid into a fibrous preform with a contact angle ranging between 60 and 80 was experimentally demonstrated in [49], serving as an

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IJSTM, Vol. 2 Issue 4, December 2011 www.ijstm.com In the LCM process, resin impregnation is highly dependent on the permeability of fibrous reinforcement. As an important material parameter, permeability represents the degree of difficulty for a fluid to penetrate a porous medium, determined by the geometry of the fibrous preform, which can be predicted according to empirical equations, such as CarmanKozeny equation [57], Gebart model [58] and Westhuizen model [59]. However, discrepancies are always observed between data from models and typical experiments [60], which are believed to be caused by neglecting the effect of microscopic flow on the interpretation of the macroscopic impregnation. It has been known that complicated preform structure induces a dual-scale flow behavior: microscopic flow and macroscopic flow [61-65]. A direct result from this flow competition is entrapment of voids within the fabric [66], especially micro voids formed due to the microscopic capillary effects and low permeability of the fiber tows [67]. Because of the importance of capillary flow in LCM process, a number of studies have paid close attention to the evaluation of capillary pressures Min li et al. carried out the test on the influence of the dynamic capillarity on the fiber preform in the vacuum infusion and found that i. Dynamic capillary pressures vary depending on the velocity of penetration, totally different from the thermodynamic capillary pressure estimated by Young equation. As infiltration going on, the interfacial effect gradually becomes stronger in competition with the viscous effect, and the dynamic capillary

experimental confirmation of the ideas, developed in [39,47,48] 2. The second problem with Eq. (4) is that it is derived from the average value of the specific surface area (S). It means that infiltration is ensured only into the pores with average openings, and thus into the largest volume segments inside the preform. At the first sight it is sufficient, as it ensures a high filling ratio of the free space in the composite. However, this will not ensure the infiltration into smaller spaces between the fibers see appropriate photographs in papers [38, 5052] and measured values [53]. It is, however, not entirely clear, whether the empty spaces recorded between the fibers are due to noninfiltration, or to the appearance of the solidification shrinkage. Whatever is the reason these small empty spaces appear to be the weakest points of the composites. A more advanced equation for the capillary pressure was derived by Bayramli and Powell [47] (see also [54, 55]). The capillary pressure was described as function of the directional body angle (gradually changing while the liquid infiltrates between the fibers in a normal direction to their axes). However, the final equation for the threshold pressure was not given in [47] A more detailed analysis was carried out by G. Kaptay [13] for the threshold pressure for the case when the direction of infiltration is normal to fibers axes which in most of the infiltration case the common direction of infiltration. At this point it should be noted that Eq. (4) is valid for the case when the direction of infiltration is parallel to fibers axes. 7. Influence of dynamic capillary on the permeability of the preform

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IJSTM, Vol. 2 Issue 4, December 2011 www.ijstm.com consideration and especially in vacuum infusion. As per the Min li et.al. In the 70% fiber fraction experiment of vacuum driving penetration, the data of -1.7 kPa indicates almost negligible influence of capillary pressure. This phenomenon gives a hint on the consideration of critical factors which determines the drag or promotive effect of capillary force acting on the velocity of penetration flow in liquid composite molding under the assistance of vacuum. It can be concluded that negative capillary pressures definitely present the dynamic synergistic effect of interfacial force on velocity of vacuum driving penetration in unidirectional fiber bundles, where viscous and interfacial forces are the dominant flow regime. The calculated Kozeny constant the Eq. (4) of compressed air driving penetration was calculated as k0 = 1.1 and for the vacuum driving penetration, the Kozeny constant was reported to be 0.37. The result displayed a much lower k0 (Kozeny constant.) in comparison with the case for compressed air driving experiment, which further demonstrated the influence of type of applied external pressure on the geometry of fiber bundle. It has been shown that the widely accepted Eq. (4) for the threshold pressure of infiltration describes correctly the condition of infiltration only along the fibers axes and it seriously underestimates the condition of infiltration in direction normal to fibers axes. The threshold pressure of infiltration normal to fibers axes was described as function of the contact angle and
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pressure closely related to the capillary number. ii. Negative capillary pressures definitely present the dynamic synergistic effect of interfacial force on velocity of vacuum driving penetration in unidirectional fiber bundles, where viscous and interfacial forces are the dominant flow regime. iii. The new equations obtained by the different researchers are theoretical hexagonal models and there are certain assumptions in those models. In reality, the following modifications should be taken into account apart from the considerations of the orientation of the fiber in the preform and the (parallel or normal to the flow of the resin in the mould): iv. (a) The fibers are not straight, (b) The fibers are not perfectly cylindrical, (c) The fibers have not identical diameters, (d) The fibers have some roughness, (e) The fibers are not packed regularly, (f)it is not a particular value, rather a distribution of fiber distances. 8. Conclusion 1. Number of variable to be controlled for having a thoroughly saturated infusion is many due to the presence of bagging and the rigid mould on only one side of the preform. 2. The complete saturation of the preform before gelation time is not a simple issue, and to tackle the issue of improper saturation the science of the flow has to be better understood. 3. The capillary pressure initially neglected in the modeling of the infusion is an important

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

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IJSTM, Vol. 2 Issue 4, December 2011 www.ijstm.com the FFC and VIPR are going to take this methods to the next level in the coming decade. The compressibility of the preform is the basic difference between the RTM and VARTM process and the modeling the VARTM process looks to be the needing some time to be robust and repeatable as the RTM process.

smallest separation of the fibers divided by the fiber diameter. 9. The earlier researchers have focused on the applied external pressure and the synergistic effect of the dynamic capillary pressure in the vacuum driven infusion process, there is a better understanding of the void formation and void mobilization in during the infusion process which help in accurate location of the flow front during infusion which further help in knowing correct pressure profile during infusion and strategic injection port and vent locations, some of the researchers are also including the effect of phase transition at the voids to better the models to the real flow behavior in their modeling and better understanding of the flow physics. 10. The effect of the permeability variation due to compaction and sticking of the plastic bags to the top surface of the preform during infusion in a VARTM process is been reduced through the concepts of FFC and VIPR attachment in the conventional VARTM process. 11. The VIPR is automation in VARTM and the mechanical properties of the composites obtained through the VIPR method show the improvement over the conventional VARTM technique. 12. The Automation in VARTM should be judicious and careful as this may to some extent is adding cost to the VARTM process and may jeopardize the flexibility of the VARTM process. The VARTM is a much understood technology then just a cheap method of producing long composite parts, which it was earlier the simulation tools like LIMS, RTM -Worx and attachment like

9. References
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