In-mould coating (IMC) is an environmentally friendly alternative to painting for injection moulded plastic parts. IMC is carried out by injecting a liquid low viscosity thermoset material onto the surface of the thermoplastic substrate while it is still in the mould. The coating then solidifies and adheres to the substrate. The IMC process is being integrated with conventional thermoplastic injection moulding to improve the part surface quality and to protect it from outdoor exposure. In a previous paper, we presented a Hele–Shaw based mathematical model to simulate the coating flow during the IMC process assuming the coating to be a Newtonian fluid. It has been shown that the coating behaves like a shear thinning fluid. In this paper, a power-law viscosity model is employed to describe the rheological behaviour of the coating material. The continuous deformation of the thermoplastic substrate caused by the coating injection is analysed by means of the PVT relationship of the substrate. The corresponding model is solved using the control volume based finite element method to predict the fill pattern and pressure distribution during the coating flow. The predicted results are compared to experimentally obtained fill patterns. The need to include the ‘edge effect’ is also discussed.

In-mould coating (IMC) is carried out by injecting a liquid low viscosity thermosetting material onto the surface of the injection moulded part after it has solidified, while it is still in the mould. The coating then cures and adheres to the substrate. Due to its successful application to exterior body panels made from compression moulded sheet moulding compound, IMC is being developed as an environmentally friendly technology that would ultimately replace painting of injection moulded thermoplastic parts. In the short term, however, we believe IMC has the potential of being a substitute for primers. In a previous paper, we presented a Hele–Shaw based mathematical model to simulate the coating flow during the IMC process assuming the coating to be a power law fluid and using the traditional no-slip boundary condition. This model adequately predicted the fill patterns but did not predict pressures correctly. This deviation has been attributed to slip (or apparent slip) at the wall, as often found in flow through microchannels, due to the microscopic length scale of the flow, and the existence of a high shear rate Newtonian plateau for the coating viscosity. In this paper we present a mathematical model that includes the slip boundary condition and the Carreau viscosity model to properly describe the rheological behaviour of the coating material at high shear rates. The rheological and slip parameters of the coating material were measured using a customized micro slit rheometer. The predicted pressures are compared with experimental results obtained using our IMC pilot facility. It was found that the predicted pressures and coating thickness agree well with the measured values.

The largest component of the injection molding cycle is the cooling time. Thus it is highly desirable, to be able to predict what its minimum acceptable value can be. This is becoming even more important with increased competition from regions where the labor cost is low. In an injection molding operation, the mold thermal state changes from its initial value until a quasi steady state is reached. The minimum required cooling time increases with continuous molding until a steady state value is achieved. Improving the mold thermal design will decrease the cooling time thus reducing total cycle time. The overall goal of this work is to develop a simple reliable method to predict a minimum safe cycle time for steady production. In this article, we discuss software capable of simulating the thermal state of the part and mold for multiple injection molding cycles while balancing simulation time with results accuracy. Three case studies are presented, one done in our labs and two on‐site at an automotive manufacturing facility. The three case studies are used to evaluate the ability of the software to predict part surface temperature for continuous molding. We also discuss how this software can be used as the basis to establish the minimum safe cycle time. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 2008. © 2008 Society of Plastics Engineers

Carbon nanofibers (CNFs) nanopapers have shown great potential to improve the surface of fiberreinforced polymeric composites, including providing electromagnetic interference shielding and erosion resistance. During typical resin transfer molding (RTM) process, the CNF nanopaper is incorporated into the fiber preform as a surface layer. To learn how resin flows through the fiber preform and nanopaper layer, permeabilities of the fiber preform and nanopaper need to be measured. As is well known, measuring the permeability of fiber preforms is experimentally challenging. Results usually exhibit large experimental variability. Measuring permeability of nanopapers is even more complicated. To improve the accuracy of results, permeability of CNF-based nanopapers was measured using different experimental setups. In-plane permeability of nanopaper was measured by both unidirectional microslit flow and radial flow approaches. Trans-plane permeability was measured as well, using a trans-plane flow cell and a flow visualization mold. In this article, we discuss the methods used and provide experimental results. We also conducted computational fluid dynamics simulations to study the detailed flow patterns of the nanopaper/RTM process and compared the simulated effect of the nanopaper on retarding the flow (length of the lag) with respect to the glass preform with flow visualization results. POLYM. COMPOS.,