The residual thicknesses of the skin and the inner layers are important quality indicators of water-assisted co-injection molding (WACIM) process or overflow WACIM (O-WACIM) parts. At the curved section, the residual thicknesses change significantly. A numerical simulation program based on the computational fluid dynamics method was developed to simulate the O-WACIM process. After the numerical simulation program was validated with the experimental results, it was used to study the effects of the bending radii and bending angles on the residual thicknesses of the skin and inner layers of O-WACIM parts. The results showed that the penetration of the inner melt and water was always close to the inner concave side due to the higher local pressure gradient and temperature. The effects of processing parameters on the residual thicknesses of the skin and inner layers were investigated using the orthogonal simulation method. It was found that the residual thicknesses of the skin/inner layer at the inner concave/ outer convex side are mainly influenced by different parameters.

The residual wall thicknesses (RWT) of the skin and the inner layers are important quality indicators of water-assisted coinjection molding (WACIM) parts. The influences of the shape of the cavity cross section and the processing parameters, including the water pressure, water delay time, inner melt temperature, and inner melt flow rate, on the penetration of the inner melt and water were explored via experiments. The results showed that the shape of the penetration section of the inner melt was closer to the cavity section with round corners, while that of the water ended up being round. Both the penetration ratios of the inner melt and the water increased proportionally with increasing circle ratio. Both the minimum values of the total RWT and the inner melt RWT increased with increasing circle ratio. Both the maximum values of the total RWT and the inner melt RWT increased with increasing Max_D, which is the maximum distance between the inscribed circle center and the wall. Both the penetration ratios of the inner melt and the water increased with increasing water pressure, decreased with increasing water delay time, and increased with increasing inner melt flow rate and increasing inner melt temperature.

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