Epoxy resins are one of the most widely used thermosetting materials, especially for transformer insulation in the electrical industry. One of the primary technologies used for manufacturing such products is based on pressure casting. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations of the mould filling stage in a pressure casting process for epoxy resin casting are carried out and presented in this paper. Two designs of a gating system are studied and their effects on the flow parameters in the mould are analyzed. The two designs being top pour and bottom pour inlet. A new solver is developed in an open source CFD framework, OpenFOAM, which incorporates the Navier–Stokes equations, energy equation including the viscous dissipation and a new isoAdvector approach for capturing the liquid-gas interface. The objective is to simulate the flow and heat transfer of epoxy resin, while being filled in the mould that is initially empty and heated to a specified temperature. Formulation was validated with experimental measurements of the classical dam breaking problem. For the resin filling problem, further verification was carried out using grid-dependent studies and temporal fill factor comparisons to experiments. In addition, instantaneous contours of volume fraction and temperature, and velocity vectors are studied to understand the flow patterns and heat transfer in the mould during the filling process. Among both the gating designs, the bottom pour was the more preferred one as it resulted in less turbulence, sloshing and it provides an easy passage for the voids to escape leading to higher fill factor. This analysis also helps in recognising the location of voids and thereby help in potentially identifying optimal process parameter settings for a more suitable mould design.

环氧树脂是应用最广泛的热固性材料之一，特别是在电气工业中用于变压器绝缘。用于制造此类产品的主要技术之一是基于压力铸造。本文进行并介绍了环氧树脂浇注压力浇注过程中充模阶段的计算流体动力学 (CFD) 计算。研究了浇注系统的两种设计，并分析了它们对模具中流动参数的影响。顶部倾倒和底部倾倒入口两种设计。在开源 CFD 框架 OpenFOAM 中开发了一种新的求解器，它结合了 Navier-Stokes 方程、包括粘性耗散的能量方程和用于捕获液-气界面的新 isoAdvector 方法。目标是模拟环氧树脂的流动和热传递，同时将其填充到最初是空的并加热到指定温度的模具中。通过对经典溃坝问题的实验测量来验证公式。对于树脂填充问题，使用网格相关研究和与实验的时间填充因子比较进行了进一步验证。此外，还研究了体积分数和温度的瞬时轮廓以及速度矢量，以了解填充过程中模具中的流动模式和热传递。在这两种浇口设计中，底部浇注是更优选的一种，因为它导致更少的湍流和晃动，并且它为空隙提供了一个容易逃逸的通道，从而导致更高的填充系数。