Modeling and simulation of injection molding process of polymer melt by a robust SPH method

Abstract

• A robust SPH approach was proposed. • Solid boundaries were modeled in a flexible way. • Injection molding process of polymer melt was studied. • The fluctuations-free pressure and velocity fields were recovered. In the present study, the injection molding process of polymer melt based on the generalized Newtonian fluid model is investigated by a robust smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. The numerical method is proposed by introducing a Rusanov flux into the continuity equation to improve the prediction of the pressure distribution and employing a corrected kernel gradient to improve the computational accuracy. In addition, a robust treatment of solid boundary is presented and verified by the spin-down problem. The merits of the robust SPH method are firstly illustrated by 2D dam breaking flow. Then the numerical method is extended to deal with the flow phenomena related to injection molding process of polymer melt. A number of numerical examples including 2D injection moldings of a thin plate mold, a circular disc with core, a ring-shaped channel, and a S-shaped cavity, and 3D injection moldings of a Z-shaped cavity and a four-legged fork are conducted. The numerical results are in agreement with the experiments, which demonstrate that the SPH method proposed here is capable of handling with injection molding process of polymer melt in a robust manner. Moreover, the robust SPH method allows to recover the fluctuations-free pressure and velocity fields which in most cases cannot be easily obtained by the traditional SPH method.