Numerical study of thermal control system for rapid heat cycle injection molding process

Hammami, Moez; Kria, Fatma; Baccar, Mounir

doi:10.1177/0954408914527917

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The used heating medium was the saturated steam, which circulates in channels at T s . The channel layout was previously chosen by Hammami et al 9 to improve both part quality and process productivity. For the heating stage, the heat transfer at the interface mold/channels can be taken into account by an overall heat transfer…”

Section: Mathematical Formulation and Numerical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the aforementioned works have optimized the heating efficiencies and the part quality, they have only been interested in the first heating and still have many problems to be applied in the regular RHCM cycle. Recently, Hammami et al 9 studied a 3D thermal regulation system of RHCM producing LCD panel and found a large difference between the first cycle and the regular cycle. They 9 revealed that the necessary time and the consumed energy for a heating phase can be reduced by about 50% after the first cycle molding, which has been explained by the thermal inertia of the mold.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Numerical study of the effect of operating parameter on rapid heat cycle molding process

Hammami

Kria

Baccar

2016

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part E:

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Recently, rapid heat cycle molding technology has been developed based on the mold heating before each polymer injection stage. For this process, successful heating and cooling phases are of great importance to ensure the cycle productivity and product quality. In this study, a three-dimensional model was developed to investigate the thermal response during the rapid heat cycle molding process. The procedure uses the finite volume method and the fractional area volume obstacle representation to obtain the thermal behavior of both polymer and mold until reaching the regular cyclic regime. The authors' objective was to determine the operating parameter effect on rapid heat cycle molding process. Thus, four parameters were studied: the heating and cooling temperatures, the heat transfer coefficient of the cooling phase, and the fouling resistance at the channels. To investigate the influence of these parameters on the product quality and the process productivity and profitability, four criteria were selected: cycle time, consumed energy, temperature gap at the surface cavity, and temperature homogeneity in the polymer part. It was found that the operating conditions had a significant effect on the rapid heat cycle molding cycle performance. It was demonstrated that the heating medium temperature affects only the heating time; however, the cooling water temperature affects both heating and cooling times. In particular, the cooling temperature range of 50-60 C reduces the consumed energy compared with the lowest temperatures, without a significant increase in the cycle time.

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Section: Mathematical Formulation and Numerical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical study of the effect of operating parameter on rapid heat cycle molding process

Hammami

Kria

Baccar

2016

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part E:

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“…For heating the mold to over 100 °C, electronic heaters were inserted into the volume of mold plate [ 6 ]. After that, the sheet heater was suggested for locally heating the mold surface.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

External Gas-Assisted Mold Temperature Control Improves Weld Line Quality in the Injection Molding Process

et al. 2020

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Simulations and experiments were conducted with gas temperatures of 200–400 °C to investigate the impact of external gas-assisted mold temperature control (Ex-GMTC) on the quality of weld line of molding products. In the heating step, the heating rate was 19.6 °C/s from 30 to 128.5 °C in the first 5 s in a 400 °C gas environment. When applied to heating the weld line area of an injection mold, Ex-GMTC improved the appearance of the weld line when the cavity temperature was preheated to 150 °C. For the tensile strength test, a melt flow simulation comparing the packing pressure of different mesh thicknesses revealed that Ex-GMTC helped maintain a high pressure in the weld line area in different packing periods. This was verified by an experiment where Ex-GMTC was applied with 400 °C gas to change the mesh area temperature. The result indicated that an increase in the weld line area temperature from 60 to 180 °C improves the tensile strength of all mesh thicknesses, which was more pronounced with thinner parts, especially at 0.4 mm. The simulations revealed that high temperature is concentrated in the weld line area of the cavity surface, thus reducing the energy wasted during heating.

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“…They [13] have demonstrated an improvement of 27.3% in the heating efficiency when changing the original design by the optimal configuration. More recently, Hammami et al [14] and Kria et al [15] have demonstrated, through 3D numerical thermal regulation studies of RHCM molds, the necessity of carrying out simulations of several heating/cooling cycles until reaching the regular regime since they have found a strong difference between the first cycle and the regular one. They [14][15] have shown that since the second heating/cooling cycle the regular regime is reached.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, Hammami et al [14] and Kria et al [15] have demonstrated, through 3D numerical thermal regulation studies of RHCM molds, the necessity of carrying out simulations of several heating/cooling cycles until reaching the regular regime since they have found a strong difference between the first cycle and the regular one. They [14][15] have shown that since the second heating/cooling cycle the regular regime is reached. Kria et al [15] have further developed the thermal regulation system of complex shaped part and have [15] proposed a "new conformal design" of heating/cooling channels combining simple horizontal drillings with concentric vertical tubes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A modeling study on the effect of operating parameters on RHCM process using split flow channels design

Kria¹,

Hammami²,

Baccar³

2019

Mechanics & Industry

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In this work, a three-dimensional numerical study of thermal behavior of RHCM mold for automotive parts production was undertaken. Particularly, simulation of several heating/cooling cycles was conducted to determine, at the regular cyclic regime, thermal behaviors at cavity/core plates and polymer as well as thermal and hydrodynamic behaviors at cooling water. It was demonstrated that heating/cooling channels with split flow design are suitable for RHCM regulation. Besides, to further promote part quality, process productivity, and profitability, the effect of cooling parameters, such as the coolant temperature and flow velocity in channels, on the RHCM process efficiency was analyzed. To highlight the influence of these parameters on the productivity and profitability of the process, the cycle time and the consumed energy were used. Temperature gap at the cavity plate surfaces after the heating phase as well as the maximum temperature difference (MTD) in the polymer part after the cooling phase were used as criteria to evaluate the automotive part quality. The results show that the coolant temperature increase in the range between 30 and 60°C reduces the energy consumption and improves the finished product quality with almost the same cycle time obtained by low coolant temperature. As regards to coolant flow velocity effect, an optimum value of about 1 m.s À1 improves part quality and provides a compromise between the cycle time and process profitability.

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Numerical study of thermal control system for rapid heat cycle injection molding process

Cited by 9 publications

References 23 publications

Numerical study of the effect of operating parameter on rapid heat cycle molding process

Numerical study of the effect of operating parameter on rapid heat cycle molding process

External Gas-Assisted Mold Temperature Control Improves Weld Line Quality in the Injection Molding Process

A modeling study on the effect of operating parameters on RHCM process using split flow channels design

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