Experimental comparative study of the variants of high-temperature vacuum-assisted resin transfer moulding

Abstract A considerable collection of VARTM choices for composite manufacturing techniques can be both found in literature as well as in industry. Each manufacturing process provides different benefits that must be carefully considered depending on the final application of the desired composite. Here, we present a performance comparison in terms of process effectiveness related to fibre volume fraction, the magnitude of thickness variation, and void contents of 16 laminated composites manufactured by different variants of VARTM (DBVI, VAP, and CAPRI) as well as HIPRTM. Non-crimp carbon textile reinforcements and five-harness satin woven carbon textile reinforcements with a PRISM® EP2400 resin system as base constituents are used to produce composite panels. After manufacturing 16 composite panels, an evaluation of the pros and cons of the processing vs properties/performance obtained with each of them is discussed.