Effectiveness and Productivity Improvement of Conventional Pultrusion Processes.

Pultrusion is a technological process in which fibers impregnated with resin move through the heated die and solidify into a composite profile with a constant cross section, as in the metallic die. The effectiveness and productivity of conventional pultrusion processes, preserving the quality of pultruded profiles, could be improved by process optimization or by the application of new, effective heating sources instead of electrical resistances with high heat losses. Due to the large dimension of the numerical problem and multiple iterations applied for the solution of government equations, an optimization methodology was developed, using the method of experimental design and the response surface technique.