Simulation of Injection Molding Process Including Mold Filling and Compound Curing

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Abstract

The present work reports and discusses the results of a 3D simulation of the injection molding process of a rubber compound that includes the mold flling
stage and  material curing, using the computer code is developed in “UDF”
part of the Fluent 6.3 CAE software. The data obtained from a rheometer (MDR 2000) is used to characterize the rubber material in order to fnd the cure model parameters which exist in curing model. Because of non-newtonian behavior of rubber, in this work the non-newtonian model for viscosity was used and viscosity parameters were computed by mean of viscometry test by RPA. After calculation of the physical and curing properties, vulcanization process was simulated for a complex rubber article
with non-uniform thickness by solving the continuity, momentum, energy and curing process equations. Predicted flling and curing time in a complex and 3D rubber part is compared with experimentally measured data which confrmed  the accuracy and applicability of the method.

Keywords