In the present study three dimensional steady state thermo-chemical simulation of a pultrusion process is investigated by using the finite element/nodal control volume (FE/NCV) technique. Pultrusion simulation of a composite having a C-shaped cross section is performed as a validation case. The obtained cure degree profiles for specific points match well with those in the literature. Following ...

Materials Research Group (CMRG) at the University of Mississippi (UM) have recently begun a research study supported by the U. S. Department of Agriculture (NRICSREES-USDA Award number 2003-35504-13627) examining natural fiber reinforcements (NFR). The objectives of this research are to demonstrate the feasibility of using the cost-effective pultrusion process to manufacture high quality polyme...

Life cycle assessment is a technique to assess environmental aspects associated with a product or process by identifying energy, materials, and emissions over its life cycle. The energy analysis includes four stages of a life cycle: material production phase, manufacturing phase, use phase, and end-of-life phase. In this study, the life cycle energy of fiber-reinforced composites manufactured b...

Pultrusion is one of the most cost-effective manufacturing techniques for producing fiber reinforced composites with constant cross sectional profiles. This obviously makes it more attractive for both researchers and practitioners to investigate the optimum process parameters, i.e. pulling speed, power and dimensions of the heating platens, length and width of the heating die, design of the res...

Pultrusion process is one of the most effective manufacturing techniques for production of composite materials having constant cross-sectional area. Pultruded composite profiles are getting increasingly popular in construction industry as well as in wind energy due to their high strength-toweight ratio, low maintenance cost and high corrosion resistance. Recently, pultruded profiles are foresee...

This paper develops a hybrid approach, based on genetic algorithms and simplex method, to optimize the accuracy of a manufacturing process by material pultrusion. The numerical model, proposed in a recent paper of the same authors, is solved by a finite difference scheme. The analysis technically shows the efficiency of the optimization algorithm. c © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In the present study the deterministic thermo-chemical pultrusion simulation of a composite rod taken from the literature [7] is used as a validation case. The predicted centerline temperature and cure degree profiles of the rod match well with those in the literature [7]. Following the validation case, the probabilistic design of the pultrusion process, which has not been considered until now,...

Alkali-resistant hot-curing epoxy binders based on ED-20 and new amine hardeners “Amikrost” have been developed, intended for the production of glass-composite fittings construction purposes. The rheological properties compositions were determined, using differential scanning calorimetry thermogravimetric analysis, temperature dynamics curing process thermal-oxidative resistance cured samples s...

This paper deals with the modelling and development of computational schemes to simulate pultrusion processes. Two different computational methods, finite differences and elements, are properly developed and critically analyzed. The methods are applied to a model, implemented with suitable boundary conditions, proposed in this paper. Simulations, compared with experimental data available in the...