Abstract
Pultrusion is a composite manufacturing process in which fibers are pulled continuously through a resin bath for resin impregnation before entering in a heated die, where an exothermic cure reaction occurs. The thermal energy necessary to the reaction system depends upon many aspects such as cure kinetics and pulling speed. Generally, six rectangular heaters are coupled on the pultrusion die surface to heat the material. In the present work, it was possible to check that the energy rate can be largely reduced by changing this usual heating configuration. A new configuration based on an internal heating with smaller superficial area was simulated by a CFD model. The results were compared with experimental results from the reported literature and showed that the proposed configuration was able to cure the material in efficient way. In order to find the minimum energy rate we used a particle swarm optimization algorithm.