A Technique for the Composite Materials Preforms Unsaturated Permeability Testing Based on the Voluminous Liquid Flow Rate Analysis

Аuthors

Puzyretskiy E. A.^*, Khamidullin O. L.^**, Shabalin L. P.^***, Burnashev K. V.^***

Kazan National Research Technical University named after A.N. Tupolev, Kazan, Russia

*e-mail: EAPuzyretskiy@kai.ru
**e-mail: olkhamidullin@kai.ru
***e-mail: KVBurnashev@kai.ru

Abstract

The article addresses the problem of the unsaturated porous media permeability determining, which is an important scientific and practical task with broad applications in the aerospace manufacturing, hydrogeology, geotechnology and environmental engineering.
The dry performs permeability determines the impregnation process success in the products manufacturing technology from the polymer composite materials by transfer molding techniques. Its value affects the completeness and uniformity of resin infiltration into the fiber structure and thus the absence of defects such as dry spots and voids, which reduce the mechanical strength of the final products. Under conditions of aerospace manufacturing, such defects are critically unacceptable as they may compromise the service life and reliability of structures.
Traditional approaches to the unsaturated permeability determining are based on tracking the liquid front coordinate, which separates the dry and impregnated zones. However, for materials with pronounced structural anisotropy (such as woven or 3D-preforms), the front shape is often appeared curved, while voids may form in the impregnated zone, which complicates accurate determining of the coordinate and leads to significant errors.
The article proposes the technique, which allows discarding the coordinate of the front measuring. The technique is based on the modified Darcy’s law applicable to the unsaturated filtration, and envisages the permeability computing by the relationship between the introduced fluid volume, time, viscosity, pressure drop, porosity, and sample geometry. This approach minimizes the effect of impregnation defects and irregular front shapes, ensuring a more stable estimate of the integral filtration parameter.
The technique was tested on a woven composite preform with a fiber volume fraction of 55% and dimensions of 122 × 146 × 6.314 mm. Silicone oil PMS100 with a dynamic viscosity of 100 mPa · s was employed as the impregnating fluid. The impregnation was performed under a 5 mbar vacuum with a transparent tooling base, which allowed simultaneous recording of the liquid front movement and measuring the supplied oil mass. The volume of the inserted liquid was being computed by the known fluid density. The saturated permeability test was performed as well for the results comparison.
The following values were obtained:
– Unsaturated permeability by fluid volume: K_uns^V = 2.0727 · 10–11 м2;
– Unsaturated permeability by front coordinate: K_uns^x = 2.2808 · 10–11 м2;
– Saturated permeability: Ksat = 1.58 · 10–11 м2.
The difference between the two unsaturated permeability values was 10.04%, while the difference between the unsaturated (by volume) and saturated permeability was 23.77%. This confirms that the proposed method ensures the accuracy comparable with the classical approaches. It is herewith simpler in realization, does not requre labor intensive analysis of the front geometry and fits better for the anizotropic media.
Further testing on porous media with a predefined structure, including 3D-printed samples, is being planned to evaluate quantitatively the advantages of this method and expand its applicability in engineering practice.

Keywords:

unsaturated permeability testing technique, one-dimensional stationary flow method, composite material preforms

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