An optically-based inverse method to measure in-plane permeability fields of fibrous reinforcements

Sébastien Comas-Cardona (1, 2) , Benoît Cosson (3) , Simon Bickerton (4) , Christophe Binetruy (1, 3)

1 GeM - Institut de Recherche en Génie Civil et Mécanique
2 Matériaux, Procédés et Technologie des Composites
3 TPCIM - Département Technologie des Polymères et Composites & Ingénierie Mécanique
4 Centre for Advanced Composite Materials

Structural composite manufacturing relying on Liquid Composite Molding technologies is strongly affected by local variability of the fibrous reinforcement. Optical techniques using light transmission are used and allow field measurements of areal weight (and fibre volume fraction) of glass fibre reinforcement. The coupling of obtained areal weight mappings along with injection flow fronts is used to extract in-plane permeability fields. The current work presents results with a focus on glass random mats, but the method can be adapted to any glass fibrous medium. A study of convergence and error due to discret-ization is performed. Also the influence of the stacking of fibrous layers on the preform variability is analyzed. The major advantage of the proposed technique is a relatively fast acquisition of statistical data on reinforcement variability, which can be later utilized in stochastic based process simulations.

Mots clés: Fabrics/textiles; Rheological properties; Transport properties; Resin transfer molding (RTM)

Domaines: Mécanique des structures [physics.class-ph]

Sébastien Comas-Cardona, Benoît Cosson, Simon Bickerton, Christophe Binetruy. An optically-based inverse method to measure in-plane permeability fields of fibrous reinforcements. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 2014, 57, pp.41 - 48. ⟨10.1016/j.compositesa.2013.10.020⟩. ⟨hal-01716700⟩