Unsaturated flow characteristics in dual-scale fibre fabrics at one-dimensional constant flow rate

Abstract

Fibre fabrics in liquid composite moulding can be considered as dual-scale porous media. In different gap scales, an unsaturated flow is produced during the mould filling process. This particular flow behaviour deviates from the traditional Darcy’s law, which is used to calculate the filling pressure and will cause errors. To prove the mechanism of this unsaturated flow, an experimental device was set up with a one-dimensional constant flow rate. The influencing factors, such as injected media, flow velocity and fibre fabric, were investigated in this study. Based on the experimental data, several useful conclusions were drawn, providing good references for optimising the process parameters and controlling the product quality.

Keywords

• constant flow rate
• darcy’s law
• dual scale
• lcm
• unsaturated flow