Parabolic modeling of the pultrusion process with thermal property variation

Pultrusion is a manufacturing method for fiber-reinforced composite with constant cross-section. In this process, a fiber creel is impregnated in a resin bath and passes through a heated die with a constant pulling force and the elevated die temperature induces the curing-resin process. At the present work the effect of variable properties (thermal conductivity and volumetric heat capacity) during the pultrusion process of thermosetting composite materials is numerically studied. The thermal properties are considered as a function of both temperature and degree of cure distributions inside the carbon/epoxy matrix composites. A two-dimensional parabolic model using the finite element method to solve the energy and degree of cure transport equations was used. These two equations are coupled by a source term from resin curing exothermic reaction. The resin cure kinetics and the properties that are temperature-dependent are both modeled by expressions obtained from the literature. The computational domain is discretized using an unstructured mesh with triangular elements and an adaptive refinement. Iterative algorithms are used to solve the algebraic equation system. Results showed that as the temperature and degree of cure along the die extension increase the volumetric heat capacity and the thermal conductivity also elevate. The influence of the pulling speed and the die temperature in the thermal property variation is also analyzed. It is verified that the temperature profile at the pultruded bar centerline for the variable property case is smoother than the constant one, similarly when the pulling speed is increased. The degree of cure development is delayed for the variable property simulation, requiring a larger die length to reach a suitable degree of cure design value. Moreover, the proper knowledge of these characteristics allows a better pultrusion process design.