The effect of thermal contact resistance on the thermosetting pultrusion process

In the present study the control volume based finite difference (CV/FD) method is utilized to perform thermo-chemical simulation of the pultrusion process of a composite rod. Preliminary, the model is applied for a simple setup without die and heaters and the results match well with those obtained experimentally in the literature. In order to study the effects of the thermal contact resistance (TCR), which can also be expressed by the heat transfer coefficient (HTC), on the pultrusion process, a cylindrical die block and heaters are added to the original problem domain. The significance of using the TCR in the numerical model is investigated by comparing constant and variable TCR (i.e. position dependent) at the interface. Results show that the use of a variable TCR is more reliable than the use of a constant TCR for simulation of the process. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.