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Modelling microscopic flow in woven fabric reinforcements and its application in dual-scale resin infusion modelling

Resin injection/infusion processes for the manufacture of fibre-reinforced composites involve flow on a range of spatial scales, from metres to microns. In numerical process simulation, it is impossible to model these flows explicitly, yet knowledge of micro-scale flow is important in understanding defect formation. In this paper, the continuum into which resin is flowing is represented on the macro-scale, but with the addition of ‘slave’ elements to concurrently model the micro-scale flow, using repeating unit cells to represent a woven fabric reinforcement. The results are in qualitative agreement with observations, and offer considerable gains in computational efficiency.