EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL-STUDIES OF SHRINKAGE, WARPAGE, AND SINK MARKS OF CRYSTALLINE POLYMER INJECTION-MOLDED PARTS

An integrated theory and computer program were developed in this study for simulation of shrinkage, warpage, and sink marks of crystalline polymer injection molded parts. The basic theory considers the following items: (1) mold cooling analysis; (2) analysis of the polymeric filling, packing, and cooling processes; (3) viscoelastic behavior of polymeric fluid; (4) influence of thermal and mechanical properties of polymer; (5) pressure-volume-temperature relationship of polymer; (6) crystallization kinetics of crystalline polymer; and (7) solid mechanics analysis. Considered are the origins of defects, e.g. nonuniform cooling process, nonuniform volume shrinkage, flow-induced residual stress, thermal induced residual stress, and crystallization behavior. The boundary element and the finite difference method were applied toward calculating the mold cooling analysis for obtaining the temperature profile at the cavity surface as the boundary conditions in filling and packing analysis. A hybrid finite-element and finite-difference methods were employed for simulating the injection molding filling, packing, and cooling processes. A control volume method was applied towards both finding the melt front position and also calculating the temperature and pressure profile at any instant during the filling process. A modified Tait equation provided a description of the pressure-volume-temperature relationship of crystalline polymers. The Malkin's kinetics model was employed to describe the behavior of polymer crystallization. The flow-induced and thermal induced-residual stresses employed as the initial conditions in the solid mechanics analysis were obtained with the linear thermo-viscoelastic model. The displacements, including the thickness direction of part, which could not be calculated by the traditional bending moment method, were solved by using the numerical solid mechanics analysis with the three dimensional finite element method. These methods were applied to predict the shrinkage, warpage, and sink marks of crystalline polypropylene and amorphous ABS for the plate cavity. Both the qualitative and the quantitative results for the theoretical prediction correlated sufficiently with the experimental data. The theoretical results were also correlated using the commercial software C-MOLD.