The transverse permeability of roving/tow-based fiber reinforcement is of great importance for accurate flow modeling in the pultrusion process. This study proposes an experimental approach to characterize the roving-based fiber beds' permeability under different compaction conditions. The experimental permeability results of thick roving-based preforms were reported and compared with the permeability values of roving-based preforms in the literature. A representative preform was infused under vacuum conditions. Its thickness was varied to replicate the different compaction values observed in permeability tests. Micrographs were then collected from it and analyzed to highlight the microscale transformations caused by processing/compaction on the fiber arrangement. The analysis revealed that compaction resulted in the reorganization of filaments along the direction of the applied compaction. Overall, the uniformity of the spatial filament distribution, i.e., the homogeneity within the fibrous domain, increased with increasing compaction. Furthermore, the microstructural analysis demonstrated transverse anisotropy within the tested domains, indicating that the obtained permeability results represented an upper boundary. In addition to the experimental analyses, various transverse permeability models, which were developed based on recently introduced statistical descriptors of fiber distribution, were evaluated by using the statistical descriptors extracted from the analyzed cross-sections. Among these models, the one correlating the second neighbor fiber distance with apparent permeability exhibited good agreement with the experimental results. Highlights: Transverse permeability measurement of a roving-based reinforcement was presented. The influence of compaction on the microstructure was investigated at the filament level. Filament distribution in a pultruded profile was analyzed by using statistical descriptors. The results of the experiments and the models in the literature were compared. The correlation between microstructural features and apparent permeability was discussed.

The effect of thermal contact resistance (TCR) correlated to the degree of intimate contact (DIC) between the incoming tape and the substrate on the temperature history during laser-assisted fiber placement (LAFP) was investigated. A novel experimental methodology was designed to understand the effect with a non-contact method which did not influence the local consolidation quality. To assess the influence of TCR numerically, a three-dimensional optical-thermal model was developed. Experimental results indicated that, for the same tape temperature near the nip point, an increase in the compaction force resulted in a decrease in the temperature at the roller exit and the following cooling phase, in correlation with an increase in the final DIC. Also, the effect of the laser power on the final DIC was less pronounced than the compaction force. In the thermal model, when TCR at the tape-substrate interface was not considered, the temperature predictions underestimated the experimental measurements.

Pultruded fiber-reinforced polymer composites are susceptible to microstructural nonuni-formity such as variability in fiber volume fraction (V_f ), which can have a profound effect on process-induced residual stress. Until now, this effect of non-uniform V_f distribution has been hardly addressed in the process models. In the present study, we characterized the V_f distribution and accompanying nonuniformity in a unidirectional fiber-reinforced pultruded profile using optical light microscopy. The identified nonuniformity in V_f was subsequently implemented in a mesoscale thermal–chemical–mechanical process model, developed explicitly for the pultrusion process. In our process model, the constitutive material behavior was defined locally with respect to the corresponding fiber volume fraction value in different-sized representative volume elements. The effect of nonuniformity on the temperature and cure degree evolution, and residual stress was analyzed in depth. The results show that the nonuniformity in fiber volume fraction across the cross-section increased the absolute magnitude of the predicted residual stress, leading to a more scattered residual stress distribution. The observed V_f gradient promotes tensile residual stress at the core and compressive residual stress at the outer regions. Consequently, it is concluded that it is essential to take the effects of nonuniformity in fiber distribution into account for residual stress estimations, and the proposed numerical framework was found to be an efficient tool to study this aspect.

The temperature history during the laser assisted fiber placement (LAFP) process is very important since it significantly influences the final quality of the structure. Air pockets between subsequent plies, caused by the lack of intimate contact, act as insulators and reduce the through-thickness heat transfer. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as the inter-ply thermal contact resistance (TCR). So far, the link between the degree of intimate contact, the corresponding TCR and its influence on the thermal history has not been clearly demonstrated specifically for LAFP. The results indicate that TCR influences the cooling period of the process.