Relationship Of Shear Histroy, Morphology – Microstructure And Mechanical Properties Of Micro Injection Molded Parts
The relationship of shear history, morphologymicrostructure and mechanical properties of the microscale parts was investigated based on the polypropylene parts with thickness 0.2mm and 0.5mm molded under varied injection speed. Shear rate was analyzed using Moldflow. 0.5 mm parts showed skin-core structure in the thickness direction with imperfect shish-kebab structure appeared in the transition layer between skin layer and core layer, however, the transition layer of 0.2 mm parts shows columnar crystal. The whole shear level in shear history increased with injection speed increasing for all the parts with two thicknesses. The ratio of skin layer of 0.5 mm parts decreased as the injection speed increased, which result in the decreasing of yield stress, modulus, breaking strength and elongation at break. The ratio of skin layer of 0.2 mm parts increased with injection speed increasing, and results in increasing of yield stress, modulus and breaking strength, and decreasing of elongation at break.
Relevant Aspects in Modeling of Micro‐injection Molding
Growing demands in the manufacturing of micro and precision components in plastics require new concepts for molding machines and micro molds on the one hand. On the other hand, a deeper understanding of the filling and solidification process in a micro mold is indispensable. In this work, the filling process of a micro spiral was analyzed by modeling the compressible flow using pressure dependent viscosity and adjusted heat transfer coefficients. At the same time, experimental filling studies were carried out on an accurately controlled micro‐injection molding machine. Based on the relationship between the injection pressure and the filling degree, essential factors for the quality of the simulation can be identified. It can be shown that the flow behavior of the melt in a micro cavity of high aspect ratio is extremely dependent on the melt compressibility in the injection cylinder which needs to be considered in the simulation in order to predict an accurate flow rate. Moreover, the heat transfer coefficients between the melt and the mold wall vary significantly when changing cavity thickness and processing conditions. It is believed that a pressure dependent model for the heat transfer coefficient would be able to improve the quality of the process simulation.
Flow and heat transfer simulation of injection molding with microstructures
Injection molding has been used for mass production of polymer products with microstructures. Conventional Hele-Shaw 2.5D midplane simulation is unable to describe the flow pattern correctly. It tends to over-predict the effects of microstructures on global flow patterns. For the unidirectional flow, an x-z planar based on the general momentum equation is able to achieve better accuracy and to retrieve more detailed flow and heat transfer information around the microstructures. A hybrid numerical technique is developed, which can significantly reduce the nodes and computation time, and yet provide good flow simulation around the microstructures. The mold-melt heat transfer coefficient and injection speed are shown to be very important factors in determining the filling depth in microstructures. A decrease of the heat transfer coefficient and the occurrence of wall-slip are likely in microchannels. Polym. Eng. Sci. 44:1866–1876, 2004. © 2004 Society of Plastics Engineers.