Effects of vacuum pressure, inlet pressure, and mold temperature on the void content, volume fraction of polyester/e-glass fiber composites manufactured with VARTM process

Vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) process is one of the liquid composite molding (LCM) processes aimed at producing high-quality composite parts. The void content and fiber volume fraction of a VARTM part can be affected by many parameters and is critical to the mechanical properties and the quality of the part. In this paper, a series of experiments were conducted with a heated dual pressure control VARTM setup for investigating the effects of vacuum pressure, inlet pressure, and mold temperature on the void content and fiber volume fraction of polyester/E-glass fiber composite. It was found that stronger vacuum and higher mold temperature can better control and increase the fiber volume fraction; however, such a combination of strong vacuum and high mold temperature may also require a reduced inlet pressure for minimizing the void content. The need of pressure reduction can be explained with the compatibility between Darcy's flow and capillary flow in the fiber preform and can be calculated based on the room temperature VARTM results. The experimental results suggest that high mold temperature, high vacuum, and appropriately reduced inlet pressure can produce a VARTM part with high fiber volume fraction and low void content.