Numerical simulation method for weld line development in micro injection molding process

Abstract

In order to reduce the “trial-mold” risk and cost, numerical simulation method was applied to micro injection molding weld line development investigation. The micro tensile specimen which has the size of 0.1 mm (depth)×0.4 mm (width)×12 mm(length) in test area was selected as the objective part, and polypropylene (PP) as the experimental material. Respectively with specific commercial software (Mold Flow®) and general computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software (Comsol® Multiphysics), the simulation experiments for development of weld line in micro injection molding process were executed and the real comparison experiments were also carried out. The results show that during micro injection molding process, the specific commercial software for normal injection molding process is not valid to describe the micro flow process, the shape of flow front in micro cavity flowing which is important in weld line developing study and the contact angle due to surface tension are not able to be simulated. In order to improve the simulation results for micro weld line development, the general CFD software, which is more flexible in user defining function, is applied. The results show better effects in describing micro fluid flow behavior. As a conclusion, as for weld line forming process, the numerical simulation method can give a characteristic analysis results for processing parameters optimizing in micro injection molding process; but for both kinds of softwares quantitative analysis cannot be obtained unless the boundary condition and micro fluid mathematic model are improved in the future.

Keywords

weld line / micro injection molding / numerical simulation

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