Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 619621

The early history of the resin transfer moulding process for aerospace
applications
K.D. Potter
Aerospace Engineering Department, University of Bristol, Queens Building, University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK
Received 3 July 1998; accepted 16 September 1998

Abstract
The resin transfer moulding (RTM) process has been the subject of a great deal of practical and theoretical development for aerospace
applications since the early 1980s. This article looks at the very early developments of RTM in an aerospace setting. This development took
place over a few years at the start of the 1950s. By 1956 almost all the features of RTM for aerospace applications had been introduced in a
series of six patents. This achievement was made without any of the theoretical infrastructure now considered critical and was the work of a
small group within a single company. The developed technology dropped from view in the general aerospace composites community and had
to be redeveloped 25 years after the last patent was applied for. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Aerospace applications; E. Resin transfer moulding (RTM)

1. Introduction
It is generally assumed that Resin Transfer Moulding
(RTM) is a process that was developed for general aerospace applications in the 1980s, following on from some
limited earlier applications such as aircraft radomes. The
development of the technology of RTM is understood to
have been underpinned and made possible by a substantial
research effort aimed at explicating fundamental aspects of
the process and turning these into effective process models.
The state of the art can be described as noted in the list
given below.
1. Proven and patented process.
2. Demonstrated for complex integrated components
including curved and stiffened panels.
3. Demonstrated for closely toleranced components.
4. Resin flow lengths up to 3.6 m achieved, although flow
lengths up to 1.8 m preferred.
5. Metallic inserts may be used.
6. Combination processes using an element of prepreg
with additional resin introduced under pressure are
possible.
7. A variety of resin types may be used.
8. A variety of reinforcement types used including shape
woven preforms and other preform types.
9. Tools sealed and evacuated, tools made of metal or
composite, importance of adequate stiffness in tools
understood.

10. Multiple injection ports, sequential injection to control

the flow front path, flow monitored during injection.
11. Resin premixed or catalyst incorporated in preform
pack.
12. Resin can be mixed on line in RTM specific machinery
with solvent flushing.
13. Pre-drying of reinforcement by passing warm air
through the tool cavity.
14. Automatic shut-off valves at outlets when a predetermined through flow has occurred.
15. Feed-back from outlet valves to shut off inlet valves.
16. Automation of the process based around a four-station
carousel for the various stages of the process.
The 16-point list shown above will be familiar to those
currently working with the RTM process. What may be less
familiar is that each and every one of the points actually
represents the state of the art in RTM prior to 1960.

2. Origins of the RTM process

The earliest approach to RTM appears to arise from a US
navy contract for the development of 28-ft long personnel
boats [1]. This was let in 1946 and specified the use of glass
fibre/polyester to be moulded using a vacuum injection
method. In this method the reinforcement was held between
two mould halves with the resin poured into a trough in
which the lower edge of the tool sat. The resin was drawn

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K.D. Potter / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 619621

Fig. 1. Cross-section through integrated single shot wing moulding

described in Ref. [3].

up by vacuum from the top of the tool. This process was also
later used in the manufacture of aircraft and missile nosecones, and versions were utilised in which pressure rather
than vacuum was used to drive the resin. The basic vacuum
injection process was very problematical and unsuitable for
complex geometries or the majority of potential applications
in aerospace.
What we would now recognise as RTM was described in
a series of patents with priority dates between 1952 and
1956 [26], by Harold John Pollard and John Rees (Pollard
and co-workers for the first two patents) of Bristol Aircraft
Limited. They did this at a time when the only reinforcements offering a better stiffness to weight ratio than steel
were plant fibres and asbestos, and the resin of first choice
was phenolic, although polyester and epoxy resins had been
commercially available for some years. One of the spurs to
the development was clearly the difficulties being encountered in moulding complex shapes with asbestos/phenolic
prepregs. Unless hydrostatic pressure could be guaranteed
the water evolved in the condensation reaction would
damage the laminate properties. One way to guarantee the
pressure is to inject resin at high pressure to flood the tool
cavity and act as a pressure medium. The patent to cover this
was applied for in November 1952 [2] and included a claim
relating to moulded-in metal inserts. In this case the injected
resin was intended to be filled with short asbestos fibres both
to provide a pressure medium and to build up stiffening ribs
on the moulding, which was intended as an integrally stiffened wing skin. In November 1953 [3] another patent was
applied for, this extended the idea to an integrally stiffened
airfoil to be made in one shot from reinforced phenolic or
(significantly) polyester resin. Fig. 1 shows just how ambitious this proposal was. In this case the whole geometry is
intended to be filled with reinforcement plies, although
these are still said to be pre-impregnated. The baseline
process is still seen as the high pressure injection of filled
phenolic resin over felts of preimpregnated asbestos phenolic, but the patent also discusses the use of polyester resin at
low injection pressure and the use of woven reinforcements
rather than felts.
The patent applied for in February 1955 [4] describes a
process that would be immediately recognisable as RTM.
The applications quoted for the invention are aircraft fuselages and automobile bodies and the illustrative component
is an integrally stiffened shell with double curvature. There
is sufficient detail given in the patent to demonstrate that this
is no armchair patent and that real parts had been made and
problems in their manufacture had been overcome. For
example the maximum resin flow length is quoted as
12 ft, whilst 6 ft is said to be a preferable limit. The patent

also gives an adequate description of the manufacturing

route to a GRP mould and the importance of mould stiffness
in RTM is recognised by the addition of external stiffeners
in the tooling. The whole thrust of this patent is how the
limitations of the previously known vacuum infiltration
techniques, suitable for small shell parts, could be eliminated to permit the manufacture of large and complex
structures.
The story does not quite end there as in October 1955 [5]
patents were applied for on an injector mechanism for
mixing two part resins in a controllable way prior to injection into a tool. The injector also incorporated a solvent
flush for the mixing cavity and injection lines. Another
refinement was an air drying mechanism so that reinforcements could be dried with warmed air prior to injection of
resin (the lesson that reinforcements must be rigorously
dried prior to resin injection was re-learned the hard way
by the author, 30 years later). Lastly, the suggestion is made
that automation is possible by utilising timers to operate the
various valve sequences required.
A year later another patent application [6] described
devices that could be attached to each outlet point of a
tool such that they automatically shut off the outlet valves
when a pre-determined amount of resin has passed through
them. When all the outlet points are shut the inlet valve can
be automatically shut. This patent also described the use of a
four station carousel for automating moulding, station 1 for
mould loading, station 2 for air drying, station 3 for resin
injection, station 4 for cure and demould.
The work to develop the RTM process seems not to have
reached the technical literature of the time; except for a
short mention of the patenting of the resin injection
process in Engineering Materials and Design of 1960,
which set the author off looking for the patents [7]. At the
time of the developments Bristol Aircraft Ltd was part of the
same group as the Bristol Car Company and the developers
of the process were clearly seeing little distinction between
the two potential markets.
In 1959 Fothergill and Harvey introduced shape-weaving
capability into UK [8]. Preform manufacture by lay-down of
chopped glass onto shaped formers was already known [7].
By 1960 all the major features of modern aerospace RTM
had been demonstrated; with the possible exception of
press-forming preforms from lightly bound, but dry,
woven cloth [9]. The word possible is used here as,
although the author is confident that this technology was
developed later, the little research he has carried out to
date in the early history of RTM leaves him uncertain in
making any hard claims. Even allowing for the fact that
some of the proposed solutions to RTM automation may
not have worked very well, and the usual tendency to try
to patent a little more than has actually been carried out the
development of this technology in the infancy of the composites industry was a remarkable achievement.
In 1960, RTM, including the variant ideas expressed in
the first two patents, was the most generally capable

K.D. Potter / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 619621

composite moulding process available and would have been

expected to be developed into full use for aerospace parts.
Clearly this did not happen (although radomes, and later
propellers, continued to be made in this way [10,11]) and
RTM had to be rediscovered for the generality of aerospace
applications two decades later. Fortunately, back in the
1950s there was not such a gulf between aerospace and
industrial moulders as there is today and RTM continued
to be used in the industrial moulding sector until it was once
more identified as useful in an aerospace setting [12]. The
process that was generally used in industrial moulding was
considerably less sophisticated than that revealed in the
patents applied for in 19551956, requiring much development effort to re-establish the process for aerospace.
It is widely assumed that the development of RTM technology was made possible by the development of a theoretical basis for understanding how resin flows through a tool.
That this is not entirely true is demonstrated by the early
development of the RTM process. In the 1950s the only
parts of the theoretical basis for RTM that were published
(at least as far as the author knows) were Darcys Law [13]
and the KozenyCarman equation [14]. There is no
evidence in the patent to determine whether or not these
equations were known to the inventors. Equally, the computers thought essential to modelling the process were unavailable at that time. The fact of the matter is that, as in so many
areas, it was and is not necessary to understand the science
to develop the technology. The authors own developments
(or more properly re-developments) in RTM carried out
from 1981 onwards shared many of the characteristics of
the earlier work; and at no time in the next decade did the
ability to analytically predict flow front shapes catch up with
the ability to construct more and more complex mouldings.
There are very real problems with using RTM to produce
complex three-dimensional mouldings with the stiffening
ribs shown in the 1955 patent. Pollard and Rees quite properly identify the ability to monitor the flow front and then
control inlet and outlet positions to control the flow as one
effective route to the manufacture of high quality mouldings. Today an array of resin detector types could be utilised
connected to a PC that controlled the switching of valves to
control the flow. In the early 1950s a simpler solution was

621

utilised; at least one side of the mould was made of translucent GRP and the flow could be directly visualised. That this
would not necessarily be an acceptable solution today does
not invalidate the approach taken in the 1950s. Pollard and
Rees identified technical problems and produced engineering solutions rather than science-based solutions. There is a
tendency among researchers to assume that technical
progress follows scientific understanding, as often as not
the reverse is true as is shown in the development and
re-development of RTM.

Acknowledgements
Occasionally one is lucky enough to be able to trace ones
debts to previous workers in the field and so this article is
respectfully dedicated to Messrs Harold John Pollard and
John Rees.

References
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Journal 1966;78:333340.
[2] British Patent Specification, 778, 683.
[3] British Patent Specification, 778, 685.
[4] British Patent Specification, 790, 639.
[5] British Patent Specifications, 849, 351, 2.
[6] British Patent Specification, 828, 453.
[7] Pickthall D. New design possibilities with Glass Fibre Reinforced
Plastics. Engineering Materials and Design 1960;3(2):96100.
[8] Product announcement. Engineering Materials and Design 2 (1959) 4.
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[13] H. Darcy, Les Fontaines publiques de la ville de Dijon, Delmont,
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[14] Carman P. Fluid flow through granular beds. Trans Int Chem Engng
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