Simulation and experiment research on the proportional pressure control of water-assisted injection molding

Abstract

Water-assisted injection molding (WAIM), a newly developed fluid-assisted injection molding technology has drawn more and more attentions for the energy saving, short cooling circle time and high quality of products. Existing research for the process of WAIM has shown that the pressure control of the injecting water is mostly important for the WAIM. However, the proportional pressure control for the WAIM system is quite complex due to the existence of nonlinearities in the water hydraulic system. In order to achieve better pressure control performance of the injecting water to meet the requirements of the WAIM, the proportional pressure control of the WAIM system is investigated both numerically and experimentally. A newly designed water hydraulic system for WAIM is first modeled in AMEsim environment, the load characteristics and the nonlinearities of water hydraulic system are both considered, then the main factors affecting the injecting pressure and load flow rate are extensively studied. Meanwhile, an open-loop model-based compensation control strategy is employed to regulate the water injection pressure and a feedback proportional integrator controller is further adopted to achieve better control performance. In order to verify the AMEsim simulation results WAIM experiment for particular Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) parts is implemented and the measured experimental data including injecting pressure and flow rate results are compared with the simulation. The good coincidence between experiment and simulation shows that the AMEsim model is accurate, and the tracking performance of the load pressure indicates that the proposed control strategy is effective for the proportional pressure control of the nonlinear WAIM system. The proposed proportional pressure control strategy and the conclusions drawn from simulation and experiment contribute to the application of water hydraulic proportional control and WAIM technology.