@inproceedings{MartinsWagnerWagnerHaufeetal., author = {Martins-Wagner, Magda and Wagner, Marcus and Haufe, Andr{\´e} and Liebold, Christian}, title = {A Graphical User Interface for Simulating Resin-Transfer-Molding Combining LS-DYNA and OpenFOAM}, series = {10th European LS-DYNA Conference 2015, W{\"u}rzburg, Germany}, booktitle = {10th European LS-DYNA Conference 2015, W{\"u}rzburg, Germany}, abstract = {The paper describes parts of the joint research project Swim-RTM including several industrial and academic partners. Its goal is to combine LS-DYNA and the open-source CFD solver OpenFOAM to simulate the production process of continuous fiber-reinforced plastics, particularly the resin-transfer-molding (RTM) process, in which the layers of dry fabric (unidirectional or woven) are formed in the mold (draping) and then filled with liquid resin with high pressure at injection points. Through a combined analysis of both the structural mechanical and the fluid dynamical phases, a better prediction and thereby optimization of the textile components properties as well as injection points can be achieved, improving the manufacturing process. The draping simulation of the fabric layers is carried out with LS-DYNA, while the injection simulation of the matrix material is performed in full 3D with OpenFOAM. A key question in this research project is how local porosities can be derived from the structural computation in the draping step. The purpose of the presented subproject is to develop a graphical user interface (GUI) to enable the simulation of the entire RTM process of long-fiber-reinforced components including the transfer of results between the draping and injection phases. The complete simulation task is relatively complex and involves several software packages, meaning a high effort for the user to get familiarized with. To circumvent this, the GUI aims at requiring from the user only the minimum necessary input data, creating and running the simulation and mapping tasks in the background, and showing graphically all demanded intermediate and final results. For the draping step several current fabric materials such as *MAT_034, *MAT_234, *MAT_235, *MAT_249 are available. Several modelling techniques for the composite setup are also conceivable, including a workflow similar to metal forming applications. In the injection step the fabric is modelled as a porous medium and different transport models and liquid resin types are at hand. For the data transfer between the draping and injection models, i.e. the mapping of data between shell and volume meshes within the developed GUI, first the OpenFOAM volume mesh is converted to LS-DYNA format and the necessary passing parameters are extracted from the output files, then the mapping tool DYNAmap [3] from DYNAmore GmbH is invoked, and finally the OpenFOAM command files are created. After the injection simulation is started and successfully terminated, information, such as the distribution of air inclusions or the shear stress distribution to analyze the reorientation of component fibers, is available and can be transferred from the 3D fluid mesh to an LS-DYNA shell mesh for further computations, for instance a crash simulation. This backward data mapping between volume and shell meshes can then be performed inside the GUI.}, language = {en} }