Abstract:In recent years, the rapid development of aerospace industry has put forward an urgent demand for high efficiency and low cost manufacturing of large and high-performance advanced resin matrix composites. Resin transfer molding (RTM) is a technology for manufacturing advanced fiber reinforced resin matrix composites. Compared with the existing hot-pressing technology, RTM has the advantages of simple equipment structure, high production efficiency and low manufacturing cost. In this paper, the research and application status of two typical RTM processes—Vacuum assisted-Resin transfer molding (VA-RTM )and Light-Resin transfer molding (L-RTM) are reviewed. The existing problems of these two processes in manufacturing large high performance components are pointed out. The research status and technical difficulties of multi-field coupled numerical simulation, new simulation methods and multi-function simulation of RTM process are summarized. Based on above conclusions, the development trend for RTM process is discussed, which is beneficial to provide reference for realizing rapid process optimization and obtaining high efficiency, high performance and large components in RTM process.