GFRP, the polymer matrix composite, has been widely used in many industrial domains including the development of natural energy by wind, construction, ship-building, automobile, power and chemical industries, and it occupies the majority of the total production of composite materials all around the world.
VARTM, one of the Liquid Composite Molding (LCM) processes for producing large composite parts such as wind turbine blades or hulls at room temperature, is a useful manufacturing method for high fiber content, low cost of equipment, high material quality and low porosity. VARTM process usually uses room temperature cured resins such as unsaturated polyesters and room temperature-curable VARTM epoxy resin.
There are various kinds of methods of manufacturing GFRP pipes, for example, hand lay-up, filament winding, pultrusion, pre-deposited fabric winding, centrifugal casting, RTM, etc., whereby long or short pipes with different dimensions and properties for various fields are produced.
However, there are very few studies on the process for GFRP pipes by VARTM.
Sin Song Bom, a researcher at the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology, has investigated the effect of several parameters on the resin filling behavior when high temperature cured epoxy GFRP pipes undergo VARTM in the heating conditions, in association with ANSYS simulations.
He found that resin flow gets faster when it is at 60℃ for infusion and semi-curing, and room temperature VARTM materials such as PE vacuum films and other auxiliary material can be used.
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