Simulación de moldeo por inyección basado en el método de volúmenes finitos (FVM)

Abstract

Introduction— One of the main concerns in the mold injection industry is to ensure efficient material processing and procurement of products at reasonable costs that reflect solid economies of scales for large production series. Cooling time is an influential and decisive variable for the efficiency of these series, under a certain temperature condition, it increases along with the thickness of the piece. Therefore, for a certain thickness, a low mold temperature and a high piece extraction temperature have a considerable influence on the reduction of cooling time, which constitutes a large span of the process cycle time: between 80 % and 85%. In this work, the injection molding process is simulated to explore the temperature distribution and material filling process of a mold designed to make ‘ear tags’, which are used for the visual control of cattle.

Objetive— The main goal is to identify the essential variables in the process (time process, injection and packaging pressures, clamping forces and injection velocity), as well as their influence on compression times and temperature distribution.

Methodology— For the above, an Experiment Design methodology (DOE) is stablished based on the 2k factorial design, based on simulations based on the finite volume method (FVM).

Results— This DOE, adapted to the numerical results, reveals as a fundamental result of this work, the study variables that are inherent in the process, in addition to achieving its characterization.

Conclusions— The results allowed studying the temperature behavior distribution in the mold, identifying as initial variables to consider in the experimentation: the initial mold temperature and the interactions between the cooling times-packaging and cooling times-initial mold temperature.