Calculation of residual stresses in injection molded products

Both flow- and thermally-induced residual stresses which arise during the injection molding of amorphous thermoplastic polymers are calculated in the filling and post-filling stage. To achieve this, a compressible version of the Leonov model is employed. Two techniques to calculate flow-induced residual stresses are investigated. First, a direct approach is developed where the pressure problem is formulated using the viscoelastic material model. Second, generalized Newtonian material behavior is assumed in formulating the pressure problem, and the resulting flow kinematics is used to calculate normal stresses employing the compressible Leonov model. The latter technique gives comparable results, while reducing the computational cost significantly.     

Calculation of flow-induced residual stresses in injection moulded products

Flow-induced residual stresses that arise during the injection moulding of amorphous thermoplastic polymers are calculated in both the filling and post-filling stage. To achieve this a compressible version of the Leonov model is employed. Two techniques are investigated. First a direct approach is used where the pressure problem is formulated using the viscoelastic material model. Secondly, generalized Newtonian material behaviour is assumed, and the resulting flow kinematics is used to calculate normal stresses employing the compressible Leonov model. The latter technique gives comparable results, while reducing the computational cost significantly.     

聚合物注射成型流动残余应力的数值分析

建立了可压缩黏弹性聚合物熔体在薄壁型腔中充模/保压过程中非等温、非稳态流动 的数学模型,用数值方法实现了注射成型过程中流动应力和取向建立及松弛过程的模拟,研 究了熔体温度、模具温度和注射速率等工艺条件对分子冻结取向的影响,取得了与实验相符 的结果.     

Analysis of Composite Molding Using the Homogenization Method

In this paper, we present an application of the homogenization method to the analysis of Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) and Structural Reaction Injection Molding (SRIM). RTM and SRIM are relatively new molding processes for manufacturing continuous fiber reinforced polymer composites. First, the mold flow is analyzed. In the molding process, the resin experiences significant temperature changes as it fills the mold and forms a free boundary with air as it pushes out the air. In addition, the flow domain is the mold cavity packed with fiber perform, which is a porous medium. Here, the homogenization method is used to model the non-isothermal flow through porous media with free boundaries. A computer program is developed which is capable of simulating a three-dimensional mold flow using the finite element approximation. An example is provided for a three-dimensional part. Then, an analysis of the residual stress developed in the curing stage is given. The curing stage starts when the mold is completely filled and it involves chemical reaction and large temperature variation. In curing, the resin part undergoes larger volume shrinkage than the fiber part, and the residual stresses are developed due to this volume mismatch. In some cases, these stresses are large enough to cause micro-cracking and to exhaust the strength of the material. Here, a brief discussion of the application of the homogenization method to a residual stress analysis is given and one example is provided.     

Prediction of residual flow and thermoviscoelastic stresses in injection molding

A general model for predicting the total residual stresses generated during filling and cooling stages of injection-molded parts has been developed. The model takes into account the phenomena associated with non-isothermal stress relaxation. The main hypothesis in our approach is to use the kinematics of a generalized Newtonian fluid at the end of the filling stage as the initial state for the calculation of residual flow stresses. These stresses are calculated using a single integral rheological model (Wagner model). The calculation of stresses developed during the cooling stage is based on a thermoviscoelastic model with structural relaxation. Illustrative results emphasizing the effect of both the melt temperature and the flow rate during the filling stage are presented.     

注塑成型充填／后充填过程统一的可压缩流动分析

注塑成型是重要的塑料成型工艺,成型过程中熔体在模腔中的流动和传热对最终制品的性能和质量有重要的影响,因此,精确预测注塑过程的流动及传热历史,并进一步预测注塑制品的收缩、翘曲和机械性能等性能和质量指标具有重要意义。为了精确地描述成型过程中材料的流动及传热行为,本文针对注塑成型过程的工艺特点,将充填后充填过程作为一个统一的过程,考虑材料可压缩性及相变对充填和后充填过程的影响,建立了充填后充填过程的统一数学模型。采用有限元/有限差分/控制体积混合数值方法,实现了注塑成型充填后充填一体化模拟。数值模拟结果与实验结果的对比,验证了本文模型和算法。     

Computing flow-induced stresses of injection molding based on the Phan–Thien–Tanner model

A numerical approach is introduced to solve the viscoelastic flow problem of filling and post-filling in injection molding. The governing equations are in terms of compressible, non-isothermal fluid, and the constitutive equation is based on the Phan–Thien–Tanner model. By introducing some hypotheses according to the characteristics of injection molding, a quasi-Poisson type equation about pressure is derived with part integration. Besides, an analytical form of flow-induced stress is also generalized by using the undermined coefficient method. The conventional Galerkin approach is employed to solve the derived pressure equation, and the ‘upwind’ difference scheme is used to discrete the energy equation. Coupling is achieved between velocity and stress by super relax iteration method. The flow in the test mold is investigated by comparing the numerical results and photoelastic photos for polystyrene, showing flow-induced stresses are closely related to melt temperatures. The filling of a two-cavity box is also studied to investigate the viscoelastic effects on real injection molding.     

Full 3D correlation tensor computed from double field stereoscopic PIV in a high Reynolds number turbulent boundary layer

The turbulence structure near a wall is a very active subject of research and a key to the understanding and modeling of this flow. Many researchers have worked on this subject since the fifties Hama et al. (J Appl Phys 28:388–394, 1957). One way to study this organization consists of computing the spatial two-point correlations. Stanislas et al. (C R Acad Sci Paris 327(2b):55–61, 1999) and Kahler (Exp Fluids 36:114–130, 2004) showed that double spatial correlations can be computed from stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (SPIV) fields and can lead to a better understanding of the turbulent flow organization. The limitation is that the correlation is only computed in the PIV plane. The idea of the present paper is to propose a new method based on a specific stereoscopic PIV experiment that allows the computation of the full 3D spatial correlation tensor. The results obtained are validated by comparison with 2D computation from SPIV. They are in very good agreement with the results of Ganapthisubramani et al. (J Fluid Mech 524:57–80, 2005a).     

气体辅助注射成型过程动力学分析

基于气体穿透机理和Hele-Shaw流动模型,对管状模腔中气体冲破熔体前沿形成中空制品气辅成型过程进行了研究,推导出反映充模流动压力梯度比、非牛顿幂率指数等影响因素与计算表层熔体厚度比之间关系的数学公式,建立了熔体前沿和气体前沿速度与位移演化关系的数学模型,分别得出了牛顿流体和非牛顿流体选取不同影响参数时熔体前沿和气体前沿速度、位移的演化曲线.模拟结果表明,所建数学模型能较好的反映熔体前沿和气体前沿速度、位移演化关系.在气体冲破熔体前沿以前,气体接近匀加速运动,前沿位移梯度逐渐增加;熔体前沿的速度几乎保持不变,位移随时间接近线性增长.当气体冲破熔体前沿时,熔体和气体前沿的速度和位移均急速上升.     

Considerations of the “freezing-in” of flow-induced orientation in polymer melts by vitrification with application to processing

We develop the implications of the experimentally tested hypothesis that (i) birefringence developed during flow is quantitatively frozen-in during vitrification of glass-forming polymer melts and (ii) that the rheo-optical law may be combined with a knowledge of the stress field existing immediately prior to vitrification to yield birefringence distributions. This hypothesis is applied to various problems including multiaxial stretching of sheets, melt spinning, tubular film extrusion and injection molding. Special problems concerned with internal temperature distributions are discussed. We examine difficulties which may arise in application of the hypothesis due to residual thermal stresses. Comparisons are made to other methods of representing orientation development during flow.     

Rice Local Phase Angle Study for a Delamination Problem Between a Shape Memory Alloy and an Elastic Material

The present study is an extension of a recent paper of Freed et al. (J Mech Phys Solids 56:3003–3020, 2008). The final aim is to describe the transformation toughening behavior of a static crack along an interface between a shape memory alloy (SMA) and a linear elastic isotropic material. With an SMA as an equivalent Huber–Von Mises stress model (hypothesis of symmetric behavior between tension and compression), Freed et al. determine the initiation (ending) phase transformation yield surfaces in terms of the local phase angle introduced by Rice et al. (Metal ceramic interfaces, Pergamon Press, New York, pp 269–294, 1990). In this paper we give the general framework to determine this angle for a model integrating the asymmetry between tension and compression (experimentally measured: Vacher and Lexcellent in Proc ICM 6:231–236, 1991; Orgéas and Favier in Acta Mater 46(15):5579–5591, 2000), the Huber–Von Mises model being only a particular case. We demonstrate the local phase angle existence in an appropriate framing domain and give a sufficient hypothesis for its uniqueness and an algorithm to obtain it. Estimates are obtained in terms of physical quantities such as the Young modulus ratio, the bimaterial Poisson modulus values and also the choice of the yield loading functions. Finally, we illustrate this theoretical study by an application linking the asymmetry intensity on the width and the shape on predicted phase transformation surfaces and by a comparison with the symmetric case.     

A constrained theory for single crystal shape memory wires with application to restrained recovery

The theory of thin wires developed in Dret and Meunier (Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences. Série I. Mathématique 337:143–147, 2003) is adapted to phase-transforming materials with large elastic moduli in the sense discussed in James and Rizzoni (J Elast 59:399–436, 2000). The result is a one-dimensional constitutive model for shape memory wires, characterized by a small number of material constants. The model is used to analyze self-accommodated and detwinned microstructures and to study superelasticity. It also turns out that the model successfully reproduces the behavior of shape memory wires in experiments of restrained recovery (Tsoi et al. in Mater Sci Eng A 368:299–310, 2004; Tsoi in 50:3535–3544, 2002; S̆ittner et al. in Mater Sci Eng A 286:298–311, 2000; vokoun in Smart Mater Struct 12:680–685, 2003; Zheng and Cui in Intermetallics 12:1305–1309, 2004; Zheng et al. in J Mater Sci Technol 20(4):390–394, 2004). In particular, the model is able to predict the shift to higher transformation temperatures on heating. The model also captures the effect of prestraining on the evolution of the recovery stress and of the martensite volume fraction.     

Transient rheological responses in sheared biaxial liquid crystals

We study the rheological response of monodomain ellipsoidal biaxial liquid crystal polymers (BLCP) as well as bent-core or V-shaped liquid crystal polymers (VLCP) subject to steady and time-dependent small amplitude oscillatory shear in selected regions of the model as well as flow parameter space. We adopt the two newly developed hydrodynamical kinetic theories for ellipsoidal BLCPs and VLCPs, respectively (Sircar and Wang, PRE 78:061702, 2008, J Rheol 53:819–858, 2009; Sircar et al., Comm Math Sci (in press), 2010), in which a generalized Straley’s potential is used to represent the pairwise mean-field interaction of the mesoscopic system in biaxial phases. Transient shear stresses and normal stress differences corresponding to steady and small amplitude oscillatory shear are investigated; their variations with respect to the strength of the intermolecular potential, types of biaxial interaction, and changes in the aspect ratios for ellipsoidal BLCPs and the bent angle for VLCPs are explored.     

Dynamic coupling of fluid and structural mechanics for simulating particle motion and interaction in high speed compressible gas particle laden flow

In this work, structural finite element analyses of particles moving and interacting within high speed compressible flow are directly coupled to computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer analyses to provide more detailed and improved simulations of particle laden flow under these operating conditions. For a given solid material model, stresses and displacements throughout the solid body are determined with the particle–particle contact following an element to element local spring force model and local fluid induced forces directly calculated from the finite volume flow solution. Plasticity and particle deformation common in such a flow regime can be incorporated in a more rigorous manner than typical discrete element models where structural conditions are not directly modeled. Using the developed techniques, simulations of normal collisions between two 1 mm radius particles with initial particle velocities of 50–150 m/s are conducted with different levels of pressure driven gas flow moving normal to the initial particle motion for elastic and elastic–plastic with strain hardening based solid material models. In this manner, the relationships between the collision velocity, the material behavior models, and the fluid flow and the particle motion and deformation can be investigated. The elastic–plastic material behavior results in post collision velocities 16–50% of their pre-collision values while the elastic-based particle collisions nearly regained their initial velocity upon rebound. The elastic–plastic material models produce contact forces less than half of those for elastic collisions, longer contact times, and greater particle deformation. Fluid flow forces affect the particle motion even at high collision speeds regardless of the solid material behavior model. With the elastic models, the collision force varied little with the strength of the gas flow driver. For the elastic–plastic models, the larger particle deformation and the resulting increasingly asymmetric loading lead to growing differences in the collision force magnitudes and directions as the gas flow strength increased. The coupled finite volume flow and finite element structural analyses provide a capability to capture the interdependencies between the interaction of the particles, the particle deformation, the fluid flow and the particle motion.     

Modeling of Rocks and Cement Alteration due to CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> Injection in an Exploited Gas Reservoir

The injection of CO₂ in exploited natural gas reservoirs as a means to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is highly attractive as it takes place in well-known geological structures of proven integrity with respect to gas leakage. The injection of a reactive gas such as CO₂ puts emphasis on the possible alteration of reservoir and caprock formations and especially of the wells’ cement sheaths induced by the modification of chemical equilibria. Such studies are important for injectivity assurance, wellbore integrity, and risk assessment required for CO₂ sequestration site qualification. Within a R&D project funded by Eni, we set up a numerical model to investigate the rock–cement alterations driven by the injection of CO₂ into a depleted sweet natural gas pool. The simulations are performed with the TOUGHREACT simulator (Xu et al. in Comput Geosci 32:145–165, 2006) coupled to the TMGAS EOS module (Battistelli and Marcolini in Int J Greenh Gas Control 3:481–493, 2009) developed for the TOUGH2 family of reservoir simulators (Pruess et al. in TOUGH2 User’s Guide, Version 2.0, 1999). On the basis of field data, the system is considered in isothermal (50°C) and isobaric (128.5 bar) conditions. The effects of the evolving reservoir gas composition are taken into account before, during, and after CO₂ injection. Fully water-saturated conditions were assumed for the cement sheath and caprock domains. The gas phase does not flow by advection from the reservoir into the interacting domains so that molecular diffusion in the aqueous phase is the most important process controlling the mass transport occurring in the system under study.     

Model for charge/discharge-rate-dependent plastic flow in amorphous battery materials

Plastic flow is an important mechanism for relaxing stresses that develop due to swelling/shrinkage during charging/discharging of battery materials. Amorphous high-storage-capacity Li–Si has lower flow stresses than crystalline materials but there is evidence that the plastic flow stress depends on the conditions of charging and discharging, indicating important non-equilibrium aspects to the flow behavior. Here, a mechanistically-based constitutive model for rate-dependent plastic flow in amorphous materials, such as Li_xSi alloys, during charging and discharging is developed based on two physical concepts: (i) excess energy is stored in the material during electrochemical charging and discharging due to the inability of the amorphous material to fully relax during the charging/discharging process and (ii) this excess energy reduces the barriers for plastic flow processes and thus reduces the applied stresses necessary to cause plastic flow. The plastic flow stress is thus a competition between the time scales of charging/discharging and the time scales of glassy relaxation. The two concepts, as well as other aspects of the model, are validated using molecular simulations on a model Li–Si system. The model is applied to examine the plastic flow behavior of typical specimen geometries due to combined charging/discharging and stress history, and the results generally rationalize experimental observations.     

Flow-induced crystallization of high-density polyethylene: the effects of shear and uniaxial extension

The effects of shear, uniaxial extension and temperature on the flow-induced crystallization of two different types of high-density polyethylene (a metallocene and a ZN-HDPE) are examined using rheometry. Shear and uniaxial extension experiments were performed at temperatures below and well above the peak melting point of the polyethylenes in order to characterize their flow-induced crystallization behavior at rates relevant to processing (elongational rates up to 30 s^− 1 and shear rates 1 to 1,000 s^− 1 depending on the application). Generally, strain and strain rate found to enhance crystallization in both shear and elongation. In particular, extensional flow was found to be a much stronger stimulus for polymer crystallization compared to shear. At temperatures well above the melting peak point (up to 25°C), polymer crystallized under elongational flow, while there was no sign of crystallization under simple shear. A modified Kolmogorov crystallization model (Kolmogorov, Bull Akad Sci USSR, Class Sci, Math Nat 1:355–359, 1937) proposed by Tanner and Qi (Chem Eng Sci 64:4576–4579, 2009) was used to describe the crystallization kinetics under both shear and elongational flow at different temperatures.     

The use of a virtual configuration in formulating constitutive equations for residually stressed elastic materials

Residual stress is the stress present in the unloaded equilibrium configuration of a body. Because residual stresses can significantly affect the mechanical behavior of a component, the measurement of these stresses and the prediction of their effect on mechanical behavior are important objectives in many engineering problems. Common methods for the measurement of residual stresses include various destructive experiments in which the body is cut to relieve the residual stress. The resulting strain is measured and used to approximate the original residual stress in the intact body. In order to predict the mechanical behavior of a residually stressed body, a constitutive model is required that includes the influence of the residual stress.In this paper we present a method by which the data obtained from standard destructive experiments can be used to derive constitutive equations that describe the mechanical behavior of elastic residually stressed bodies. The derivation is based on the idea that for each infinitesimal neighborhood in a residually stressed body, there exists a corresponding stress free configuration. We refer to this stress free configuration as the virtual configuration of the infinitesimal neighborhood. The derivation requires that the constitutive equation for the stress free material be known and invertible; it is used to relate the residual stress to the deformation of the virtual configuration into the residually stressed configuration. Although the concept of the virtual configuration is central to the derivation, the geometry of this configuration need not be determined explicitly, and it need not be achievable experimentally, in order to construct the constitutive equation for the residually stressed body.The general mathematical forms of constitutive equations valid for residually stressed elastic materials have been derived previously for a number of cases. These general forms contain numerous unknown material-response functions or material constants that must be determined experimentally. In contrast, the method presented here results in a constitutive equation that is an explicit function of residual stress and includes only the material parameters required to describe the stress free material.After presenting the method for the derivation of constitutive equations, we explore the relationship between destructive experiments and the theory used in the derivation. Specifically, we discuss the use of the theory to improve the design of destructive experiments, and the use of destructive experiments to obtain the data required to construct the constitutive equation for a particular material.