International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Research Technology (IJEART)

ISSN: 2454-9290, Volume-2, Issue-9, September 2016

Characterization of Glass Fibre Polymer Laminates

by Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Moulding with
Various Parameters
M. Manasa Priyadarsini, Aerra Kiran Kumar, D. Madhav Reddy, Dr.D.V.Ravi Shankar

Abstract Resin transfer molding (R.T.M) is a competent modes were observed for Type-1 specimens, only bearing
manufacturing process for fiber reinforced polymer composite and shear-out failure modes were observed for Type-2
component production. As this process offers repeatable quality
specimens.
which is essential in production of high quality components for
automotive and aerospace applications. The permeability of
preform influences the resin impregnation. The present work II. INDENTATIONS AND EQUATIONS
investigates the influence of the critical parameters on the Governing formulae:
quality of end product. This paper publishes the experimental
1. Porosity:
results and also discusses the relationship between the preform
permeability, porosity, fiber volume fraction, and injection = Vc - Vgf/Vc
pressures of the resin in the control volume moulding processes. Where Vc = volume of cavity
Vgf = volume of glass fibre
Index Terms Design, Mould and Sample Preparation, 2. Permeability:
Analysis. K= Q ln[rf/ri] x rf2
AXP
Q = discharge of resin flow
I. INTRODUCTION
=viscosity of resin
Alexandros A Skordos and Ivana K Partridge Liquid ri = inlet radius, rf =radial flow
molding processes for the manufacture of continuously A=area of glass fibre, P=vacuum in the mould
reinforced composites have received increased attention in 3. Reynolds number:
recent years. In comparison with conventional processes, Re = xvxdx1000
which involve laying up and autoclaving, they offer a
potentially cost-efficient and easily automated alternative. = density of matrix
Various liquid molding processes, using either rigid tooling v= velocity of resin flow
(e.g. resin transfer molding - RTM) or flexible tooling (e.g. d=diameter of pipe, =viscosity of resin
vacuum infusion) have been developed. In all cases, the
central characteristic of these processes is that the III. DEVELOPMENT OF FRICTION WELDING
filling/consolidation stage is separated from the curing stage, ATTACHMENT TO LATHE MACHINE
and becomes the critical phase of the manufacturing process. Concept-model:
Therefore, resin filling and the phenomena associated with it
have become points of focus for research on composites
manufacturing. Models attempting to simulate the
impregnation of liquid resin into a dry fabric have been
developed by several groups [1-4]. These models are all
based on the application of Darcys law, which assumes that
the rate at which a fluid flows through a porous medium is
proportional to the pressure gradient.
The manufacturing methods found to be very effective on
the bearing failure mode of pin loaded composites. The
composites manufactured by

VARTM performed better than the composites

manufactured by Hand Lay-up technique. The geometry of
the composites also found to be very effective on the
performance of both types of composites. Decreasing e/d
ratios and w/d ratios resulted in decrease at sustained load for
Type-1 and Type-2 specimens. While bearing, shear-out,
net-tension and combination (shear + net-tension) failure Figure .1.Design of an achrolic plate

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 Characterization of Glass Fibre Polymer Laminates by Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Moulding with Various
Parameters

prevents sticking to the mould surface.

Figure .2.Isometric view of Mould

IV. FABRICATION OF METALLIC MOULD Figure.5. Marking on the fibre

The pressure to be applied to consolidate laminate after
impregnating resign should be applied by compression as the
required specimens are to be manufactured. The mould is
made of MS material. The grooves had been done for sealing
the two plates and to prevent the leakage of resin four dams
were fixed through nuts and bolts on a 25mm thick MS plate
which was having machined by facing operation on CNC
lathe machine. The details of the mould is shown in figure.3.

Figure.6. Cutting the fibres as per dimensions

Figure .3

Figure.7. Arranging the fibres and close the mould

VI. EXPERIMENTATION

Figure.4. Representation of Mould

V. SAMPLES PREPARATION
In the present work composite templates are prepared as
per the required dimensions. According to the required
dimensions the glass fiber mat has been cut into various
orientations by making use of different mechanical
equipment and measuring equipments. The excess material is
removed on the surface of the mould and poly vinyl alcohol
viscous liquid is applied on the surface of the mould
uniformly and left for drying about 15 minutes. This liquid
Figure.8. Vacuum pump and Accumulator
creates an invisible film which works as impervious layer

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 International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Research Technology (IJEART)
ISSN: 2454-9290, Volume-2, Issue-9, September 2016
Figure shows the vacuum pump which is used to create
vacuum pressure in the mould setup. We can adjust vacuum
pressures as per flow required. Side figure shows the
accumulator it is used store the excess amount of resin
mixture in it without transferring into the vacuum pump.
Attach a pipe to vacuum pump and accumulator.

Figure.11.The laminates are ready

Vacuum Assisted Resin transfer molding (V.A.R.T.M) is a

competent manufacturing process for fiber reinforced
Figure.9.Polyester resin and hardener are mixed in a jar polymer composite component production. As this process
offers repeatable quality which is essential in production of
Mix the resin and catalyst in a jar and stir it. Catalyst high quality components for automotive and aerospace
required in the ratio of 1:100 to the resin. Now add applications. The permeability of preform influences the
accelerator to the mixture in the same ratio. Dont mix the resin impregnation. The present work investigates the
catalyst and accelerator directly it leads to the combustion influence of the critical parameters on the quality of end
reaction. product. This paper publishes the experimental results and
also discusses the relationship between the preform
permeability, porosity, fiber volume fraction, and injection
pressures of the resin in the control volume molding
processes.
The main objective of this study is to find the influence of
critical parameters on the quality of the laminate. For this
purpose the filling time and flow front velocity is calculated
by image processing technique and video to jpg converter
software and parameters like permeability and volume
fraction is calculated from the governing formulas

POROSITY:
Figure.10. Total setup and resin flow process Chopped stand Mat:
Layers Porosity
This is the total setup required to conduct the experiment.
In this setup end nozzles are connected to the resin jar where 4 0.85
resin is transferred to the mould and the middle nozzle is
connected to the accumulator. Adjacent figure shows how
5 0.81
resin spreads over the entire mould.
6 0.78

PERMEABILITY:
Layers K cm2

4L 0.92

5L 0.63

6L 0.07

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 Characterization of Glass Fibre Polymer Laminates by Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Moulding with Various
Parameters

S Specimen-Layers-Force Average Value of

No Tensile Strength
(N/mm2 )

1 1-4L-100 mm of hg 17.6
2 2-4L-200 mm of hg 22.75
3 3-4L-300 mm of hg 18.97
4 4-4L-400 mm of hg 24.537
5 1-5L-700 mm of hg 23.058
6 2-5L-100 mm of hg 24.421 Figure.12.SEM Images -Izod impact test specimen

7 4-5L-300 mm of hg 27.39
8 5-5L-400 mm of hg 20.923
9 1-6L-100 mm of hg 51.74
10 2-6L-200 mm of hg 52.9
11 3-6L-300 mm of hg 55.2
12 4-6L-400 mm of hg 57.38

Average Value of Impact Strength

S. No. (N/Mm2 )
1 3
2 6
3 4
4 2
5 6
6 3
7 4
8 6
9 7
10 3
11 4
12 4

VII. SEM ANALYSIS

The fractured specimens by the impact test were exposed
to scanning electron microscope to understand failure
mechanism by impact test. All fractro graphs are furnished in
the Figure.12. VIII. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Analysis was performed on the experimental results of the
critical parameters investigation that influence the quality of
laminate by using V.A.R.T.M process. it is clear that when
the pressure is increasing the flow front velocity is also
increasing in all 6,7,8 layers of chopped strand mat and at the
same time the flow front velocity is more in 6layers than 7
and 8 layers of perform at constant pressure.
The results pertaining to the permeability of 6,7,8 layers of
chopped strand mat glass fiber and investigated that the
permeability is going on increasing with the increase in resin
injected pressure and permeability decreases with the

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 International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Research Technology (IJEART)
ISSN: 2454-9290, Volume-2, Issue-9, September 2016
increase in the number of layers that means 6 layers preform composites manufacturing 1992, VolNO.4 ppno.235-249
[3] Pierre Ferland,Dominique Guittard,Francois Trochu., Concurrent
is going to have more permeability than 7 and 8 layers of
methods for permeability measurement in resin Transfer Molding
fiber perform Variation of volume fraction with the resin polymer composites 1996 volume 17 (1) p.p 149-158
injected pressure depicts that the volume fraction of fiber is [4] G. Lebrun , R. Gauvin, K. N. Kendall . Experimental investigation of
nearly same value from 200mm of Hg to 300mm of Hg and resin temperature and pressure during filling and curing in flat steel
decreases at 400mm of Hg of resin injected vacuum pressure. RTM mould. Composites part-A-1996,vol. 27A ppno.347-355
[5] 5.SamuelP.OwusuOfori,DevdasM.Pai&RobertL.Sadle.ResearchIn
Advanced Materials Processing And Process
Modelling,WL-TR-97-4057-1997
[6] Yulu Ma, Xiaobin Hu and Dongdi Wu. The permeability of glass
fiber mat and .ts influence on the filling time of R.T.M
process.Proceedings of ICCM11, Gold Coast, Australia, 14th-18th
July 1997 Volume IV: Composites Processing and Microstructure
p.p no 19-26
[7] Moon Koo Kang and Woo Il Le. Analysis Of Resin Transfer
Molding Process With Progressive Resin Injection. Proceedings of
ICCM11, Gold Coast, Australia, 14th-18th July 1997 Volume IV:
Composites Processing and Microstructure p.p no 27-36
[8] NRL Pearce, FJ Guildand, J Summerscales. Improving The Resin
Transfer Molding Process For Fabric-Reinforced Composites By
Modification Of The Fabric Architecture. Fifth International
Conference on Flow Processes in Composite Materials, Plymouth,
1999, pp 303-310. ISBN 1-870918-01-0.
[9] S. Bickerton, E.M. Sozer, P.J. Graham, S.G. Advani. Fabric
structure and mold curvature effects on preform permeability filling
Variation of flow front velocity with pressure of general in the RTM process. Part I. Experiments. Composites: Part A 31
(2000),PPNO. 423438
purpose polyester resin for 6, 7, 8 layers of chopped strand [10] Alexandros A Skordos and Ivana K Partridge. Dielectric flow
glass fiber mat. sensing in resin transfer molding of carbon fibre reinforced
composites. Plastics Rubber and Composites 29 (2000)
IX. CONCLUSIONS PPNO.391-394

The experiments were performed on the chopped strand

mat of 450 GSM on 6,7,8 layers and woven fibre of 610
GSM by injecting polyester resin of viscosity 475 cp with
varying pressures from 200 mm of Hg to 400mm of Hg by
V.A.R.T.M process. The experimental results revealed the
facts that the optimum number of layers of chopped strand
mat is possible up to 8 layers because, for higher number of
layers, the critical parameters like flow front velocity,
porosity, permeability are very low and volume fraction of
fiber is more compared with that of the other layers. The
critical pressure by which the polyester resin should be
injected should be from 200mm of Hg to 400mm of Hg
because the volume fraction of fiber at 500 to 600mm of Hg
is decreasing, where there is fiber washed out with resin that
means the resin impregnation on fiber is critically low in this
controlled volume molding process.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Authors:

1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Brilliant grammar school

educational societys group of institutions, JNTUH, Hyderabad.
2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, TKR College of Engineering &
Technology, JNTU Hyderabad
3. Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Brilliant grammar
school educational societys group of institutions, JNTUH, Hyderabad.
4. Professor and Principal, TKR College of Engineering & Technology,
JNTU Hyderabad

REFERENCES
[1] Greg Hasko,H.Benson Dexter. R.T.M Cost effective processing of
composite structures.N 92-22678
[2] K.N. Kendall, C.D. Rudd,M.J. Owen and V. Middleton.
Characterization of the resin transfer molding process.

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