Fabric permeability is an important material parameter for Liquid Composite Molding (LCM) processing. Full three-dimensional characterization of the permeability tensor becomes essential for processes where the resin flows both in-plane and out-of-plane through the preform. The transverse permeability governs the through-thickness infiltration time in particular during Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM) processing and thus has to be accurately characterized. In-plane permeability databases exist (for example: http://srdata.nist.gov/permeability), but the through-thickness permeability has not been investigated extensively. The research has implemented a novel instrumentation tool, which is capable of measuring the through-thickness permeability. Several fabrics have been tested and the results are reported in this paper.
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