Thermo-Chemical Modeling and Experimental Validation of Pultruded Glass Fiber Reinforced Composites

This work develops and validates thermo-chemical models for pultrusion of glass fiber–reinforced polyurethane composites on an industrial PulFlex production line. A reduced one-dimensional model combining a calibrated Kamal–Sourour (KS) cure law with an Arrhenius type chemo-rheological viscosity formulation is cross-validated against a three-dimensional ANSYS Composite Cure Simulation using identical material inputs along a three-zone, 0.9144 m heated die. Embedded thermocouples provide in-die temperature histories at 50.8 cm·min⁻¹ for calibration, while additional differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements supply degree of cure (DoC) profiles for independent validation. At the industrial operating speed of 50.8 cm·min⁻¹, the mathematical and ANSYS models both reproduce the measured temperature peak location and exit temperature within a few degrees Celsius and predict a die-exit DoC of approximately 0.95, confirming near-complete curing. Using these calibrated fields as inputs to an analytical pulling-resistance formulation, both models predict comparable pulling force magnitudes and plateau behavior, demonstrating that the simplified 1D framework can capture not only thermo-chemical evolution but also process resistance trends over a range of pulling speeds. The validated 1D model therefore enables efficient exploration of speed–temperature–force tradeoffs for process window design, while the 3D ANSYS model provides a higher-fidelity reference for local gradients and future thermo–chemo–mechanical extensions.