COUPLED FILLING AND COOLING ANALYSIS FOR INJECTION MOLDING

摘要

Conventional analysis such as MOLDFLOW divides the injection molding process into two different stages: filling and cooling. Filling analysis assumes both the cavity and core temperatures keeping constants during filling stage, while cooling analysis assumes the part temperatures in anywhere being constants. In this study, the temperatures between mold and part are assumed unknown and determined by solving both polymer and mold thermal problems. After ejection, the mold temperatures, inheriting from the last cycle, are memorized and used as the initial values for next cycle simulation. To keep the geometrical information consistency, both the part and mold are represented by solid models. The dual domains and conventional Galerkin methods are employed to solve the filling and cooling problems respectively. The coupled method can simulate the transient and more complicate thermal problems.