21 st International Conference on Composite Materials Xi’an, 20-25 th August 2017 NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF CHARACTERISTIC OF RESIN INFUSION AT MICRO-SCALE Chen Li 1 , Arthur Cantarel 1 , Xiaojing Gong 1 , Dakai Liang 2 1 Institut Clément Ader (ICA) UMR CNRS 5312, Université Toulouse III–IUT de Tarbes, 1 rue Lautréamont, BP 1624, 65016 Tarbes, France, e-mail : arthur.cantarel@iut-tarbes.fr 2 State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, No. 29 Yudao Street, Nanjing 210016, China Key words: Infusion, Fiber, Micro-scale, Numerical simulation ABSTRACT Liquid Composite Molding (LCM) is a high-efficiency and low-cost method for composites manufacture. In LCM, the permeability of the porous composite preform is a crucial and intrinsic property. In literatures, the inner structure inside the fiber tows is considered to be decisive to the permeability. In this paper, a random configuration model for fiber arrangement is proposed and implemented in a computer code. This development enables the investigation of the effect of the random arrangements of the fiber on the permeability and the flow properties. Five parameters are considered including four micro-structural parameters (L, r, △r and δmin) and one macro parameter (ε). Numerical simulation is performed for the transverse flow of media with random arrangements of fibers. Morris method for Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) is used to study the influence of these parameters. The results shown that the porosity ε has the most obvious influence on the permeability. Among all parameters, L plays a dominant role on influencing the average velocity. 1 INTRODUCTION The core step of LCM method is the impregnation process. Thus, it is important to explore the flow resistance during the infusion process. The flow ability of liquid through a porous media is described by its permeability. The permeability is a second order tensor. It influences the infusion degree [1, 2] as dictated by Darcy’s law. The numerical simulations of the resin infusion process have been performed at the macro-scale or at dual-scales. The macro-scale approach considers the flow through the gaps between the tows whereas the dual-scale approach considers both the saturated flow through the gaps between the tows and the unsaturated flow inside the tows. For example, Brinkman equation [3] is a macro-scale approach. It is a classical method to describe the flow in porous media. However, the fiber tows are considered as whole, and the complex flow inside the tows is ignored [4].