Prediction of shrinkage and warpage in consideration of residual stress in integrated simulation of injection molding

Abstract

The accurate prediction of shrinkage and warpage of injection molded parts is important to achieve successful mold design with high precision. In this study, the numerical analysis of shrinkage and warpage of injection molded parts made of amorphous polymers was carried out in consideration of the residual stresses produced during the packing and cooling stages of injection molding. The temperature and pressure fields were obtained from the coupled analysis of the filling and post-filling stages. For residual stress analysis, a thermo-rheologically simple viscoelastic material model was introduced to consider the stress relaxation effect and to describe the mechanical behavior according to the temperature change. The effect of the additional material supply during the packing stage was modeled by assigning the reference strain. The deformation of injection molded parts after ejection induced by the residual stress and temperature change was analyzed using a linear elastic three-dimensional finite element approach. In order to verify the numerical predictions obtained from the developed program, the simulation results were compared with the available experimental data in the literature. In the case of residual stress, it was found that the present simulation results overpredicted the tensile residual stresses at the surface of injection molded parts. However, the predicted shrinkage was found to be reasonable to describe the effects of processing conditions well. Finally, an analysis of the shrinkage and warpage was successfully extended for a part with a more complex curved shape.