Optimisation of Process Parameters in Plastic Injection Moulding Simulation for Blower Impeller’s Fan Using Response Surface Methodology

Abstract

Injection moulding process parameters such as moulding temperature, melt temperature, injection pressure, and injection time have a direct impact on the quality and cost of polymer products especially in a thin and highly complex product. In any case, the improvement of these parameters is a difficult and challenging task. Thus, a good parameter setting combination through simulation and optimisation is highly required. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is utilized as optimisation method in finding the significant factor and recommended settings in minimizing the defects of volumetric shrinkage and warpage on plastic blower impeller’s fan. In simulations, three levels of melting temperature, moulding temperature, injection time and injection pressure processing parameters are selected. The material used is Polypropylene (PP). The result showed the optimum values suggested by the software are melt temperature of 210 °C, moulding temperature of 110 °C, cooling time of 0.8 s and injection pressure of 212.81 MPa. With below 15% differences error value between recommended setting and simulation, the result was in acceptable and shows RSM ability in finding the optimal setting in producing the part.KeywordsSimulationInjection mouldingResponse Surface Methodology