Numerical Simulations and Verifications of Cyclic and Transient Temperature Variations in Injection Molding Process

Cooling analysis of fully 3D simulation including multi-cycle time span and heat resource was completed. To test the numerical accuracy, different numerical models and algorithms were applied to simulate the mold temperature profile. Simulation accuracy of different numerical methods was compared and verified by experimental measurements. Mold temperature distribution was measured by an infrared radiation thermal imaging (IRTI) system from which the temperature variations at special interested locations can be obtained. As for heated mold with electric heater resource, fully 3D simulations of mold temperature variation based on both standard finite element method (FEM) in single CPU and finite volume method (FVM) implemented in parallel computation scheme were executed. All simulations show reasonable predictions in accordance with experimental results. However, predicted results of the fully 3D model for FEM and FVM exhibit are more accurate than that of the 2.5D model for BEM. The fully 3D simulated results show the minimum difference of 0.2°C, and the 2.5D model results show a minimum value of 2.4°C. Moreover, the fully 3D model not only can simulate the cyclic, transient mold temperature field but also can obtain polymer temperature simultaneously.