Title: THERMOCHEMICAL SIMULATION OF NANOPARTICLE-ENHANCED RESIN SYSTEMS

Authors: Manya Trivedi, Hemant Chouhan

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33599/GL.2026.INCOMAT.TP26-0017

Abstract: Vacuum-Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM) is one of the critical composite manufacturing techniques. It involves the use of a closed mold cavity, which is under vacuum to draw liquid resin into it; then cure the resin through controlled thermal conditions. The quality and manufacturability of VARTM components depend on resin flow behavior, cure kinetics, exothermic heat generation, and viscosity changes in both the inflow and cure processes. In this work, a representative rectangular mold cavity is used to model the flow of resin through the mold cavity and the thermochemical curing of the resin using a well-regarded, commercially available Finite Element (FE) package - ANSYS Fluent. The fluid volume is discretized using hex-dominant mesh, and the curing physics is implemented using User Defined Scalar (UDS) and Compiled User Defined Functions (UDF). A coupled flow-cure model based on the Arrhenius equation for curing kinetics, a viscosity model that is influenced by both the temperature and the degree of curing, and an exothermic heat source in the energy balance has been created. The two types of resin systems explored are neat resin and nanoparticle-modified resin. The addition of nanoparticles alters the thermal transport and rheological properties and changes the curing rate of the resin system. Therefore, the simulations include the filling time, flow uniformity, temperature rise, and gel time for both systems under the same vacuum and boundary temperature conditions. The study demonstrates how using numerical methodologies allows the prediction of how nanoparticle additions affect material processing and provides a better understanding of how addition of nanoparticles changes infusion times, cure rates, viscosities and heat transfer. Simulation-based methodology also allows for the pre-optimisation of both resin formulations and processing conditions, hence, reducing the amount of material required for trial and error while also reducing the amount of time spent developing reliable, repeatable, and high-performance products.

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Conference: INCOMAT 2026

Publication Date: 2026/03/13

SKU: INCOMAT.TP26-0017

Pages: 15

Price: $30.00