Using a Finite Volume Approach to Simulate the Mould Filling in Compression Moulding

Abstract

A mould filling simulation of an automotive hood geometry was performed using a general purpose finite volume computational fluid dynamics (CFD)code. The simulation was performed as a homogenous multi-phase model using mass sinks to remove excess air from the computational domain and performed in three-dimensions. The kinematic boundary condition was modelled using a hydrodynamic friction at the mould boundaries corresponding to that in the Barone and Caulk approximation. The fibre orientation distribution was simulated through-out the closure phase using the Folgar Tucker equation for the reorientation of the fibres and orientation tensors to describe the local orientation for each element. The paper presents the methodology for, and the possibilities of, using a general purpose CFD code for these kinds of simulations. Both mould filling simulations in general can be performed and special cases where the standard simplifications of the governing equations are not valid can be investigated.