1D-3D cell coupling simulation of resin flow behavior in perforated sandwich composite materials

The vacuum assisted resin infusion (VARI) process, recognized as a high-performance, cost-effective manufacturing technology, has been widely adopted in the production of large composite material components. Perforated core composite materials exhibit characteristics such as a high strength-to-weight ratio and strong load-bearing capacity. However, to accurately simulate the resin infusion process within perforated core composite materials, three-dimensional numerical calculations of resin flow within each hole of the core material are required, especially for thick components, involving substantial development costs and production cycles. To reduce the complexity and time costs of simulation calculations, this study proposed a novel 1D-3D finite element coupling method. Utilizing a self-developed ANSYS Fluent user-defined function (UDF) subroutine to simulate resin flow within the core material holes, the need for physical modeling of a large number of holes is avoided. This approach successfully optimizes the model construction and simulation calculation process of the vacuum infusion process for perforated core composite materials. The feasibility of the simulation was validated through full-scale infusion experiments. The research results indicate that the numerical simulation closely aligns with experimentally measured infusion time, providing a relatively accurate representation of resin flow during the formation process of perforated core structures.