Numerical simulation on weld line development of injection molding in mold cavity with inserts

Abstract

A gas-liquid two-phase model for a viscoelastic fluid is proposed and used to simulate and predict the behavior of melt welding in injection molding process, in which the extended pom-pom (XPP) model and cross-WLF viscosity model combined with Tait state equation are used to describe the constitutive relationship and viscosity change of the viscoelastic melt in this paper, respectively. Meanwhile, the coupled level-set and volume-of-fluid (CLSVOF) method is employed to capture the melt front, and the immersed boundary method is applied to the simulation of the polymer melt flows with the aid of a shaped level-set function to describe and treat the irregular mold cavities. A finite volume method on non-staggered grid is used to solve the mass, momentum, and energy conservation equations. Firstly, the benchmark problem of the single shear flow is simulated to verify the validity of the CLSVOF method. Then, the non-isothermal filling process of the viscoelastic fluid based on the XPP model in a mold with square inset is simulated, and the behavior of the weld line devolopment in the filling process is shown and compared with the experimental result. Finally, it is to simulate the evolution processes of the melt front interface and weld line in a mold with the circular notched inset; and the linear stress-optical rule is adopted to calculate the flow-induced birefringence. Numerical results show that the numerical model proposed in this paper can be employed to simulate the non-isothermal filling process in complex mold cavity and to capture the weld line automatically. Because of the complexity of polymer melt flows, the flow-induced stress increases quickly near the weld line region and then decreases gradually until reaching the mold cavity wall. The maximum value of the flow-induced stress appears at some point after the insert. The distributions of physical quantities, such as pressure and temperature in the mold, are given during the mold filling process. Moreover, it is also discussed the influence of melt and mold temperatures on the solidified layer thickness. The higher the melt or mold temperature, the thinner the solidified layer is. Thus, raising the melt or the mold temperature will improve or remove the weld line in melt filling process.