A Multiphysics Coupling of Resin Infusion and Deformation of Fiber Preform Using Customized Star-CCM plus and Abaqus

The process modeling of liquid composite molding typically consists of infusion flow modeling and curing-induced deformation modeling. Due to the dramatic difference of the two modeling approaches, the combination of the two types of models to predict LCM processes is lacking. In this work, we have selected the commercial software StarCCM+ and Abaqus to create start-of-the-art flow and deformation models. The infusion flow model highlights in a meso-macro-scale approach to simulate both the flow in inter-tow and intra-tow porosities. The curing deformation model applies the thermo-visco-elastic constitutive law to enhance the accuracy of warpage and spring-in predictions. Additionally, a framework is established to facilitate the communication of StarCCM+ and Abaqus and achieve the coupling between flow and deformation. A flow-compaction coupling problem in vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding is simulated to demonstrate the framework.