Fig. 3a–c. Deformation decomposition of shell element in the local coordinate system. a In-plane stretching element b Plate-bending element c Shell element
3 Experimental validation
To assess the usefulness of the proposed model and developed program, verification is important. The distortions obtained from the simulation model are compared to the ones from SL injection molding experiments whose data is presented in the literature [8]. A common injection molded part with the dimensions of 36×36×6 mm is considered in the experiment, as shown in Fig. 4. The thickness dimensions of the thin walls and rib are both 1.5 mm; and polypropylene was used as the injection material. The injection machine was a production level ARGURY Hydronica 320-210-750 with the following process parameters: a melt temperature of 250 ◦C; an ambient temperature of 30 ◦C; an injection pressure of 13.79 MPa; an injection time of 3 s; and a cooling time of 48 s. The SL material used, Dupont SOMOSTM 6110 resin, has the ability to resist temperatures of up to 300 ◦C temperatures. As mentioned above, thermal conductivity of the mold is a major factor that differentiates between an SL and a traditional mold. Poor heat transfer in the mold would produce a non-uniform temperature distribution, thus causing warpage that distorts the completed parts. For an SL mold, a longer cycle time would be expected. The method of using a thin shell SL mold backed with a higher thermal conductivity metal (aluminum) was selected to increase thermal conductivity of the SL mold.
 
Fig. 4. Experimental cavity model
 
Fig. 5. A comparison of the distortion variation in the X direction for different thermal conductivity; where “Experimental”, “present”, “three-step”, and “conventional” mean the results of the experimental, the presented simulation, the three-step simulation process and the conventional injection molding simulation, respectively.
 
Fig. 6. Comparison of the distortion variation in the Y direction for different thermal conductivities
 
Fig. 7. Comparison of the distortion variation in the Z direction for different thermal conductivities
 
Fig. 8. Comparison of the twist variation for different thermal conductivities
For this part, distortion includes the displacements in three directions and the twist (the difference in angle between two initially parallel edges). The validation results are shown in Fig. 5 to Fig. 8. These figures also include the distortion values predicted by conventional injection molding simulation and the three-step model reported in [3].
4 Conclusions
In this paper, an integrated model to accomplish the numerical simulation of injection molding into rapid-prototyped molds is established and a corresponding simulation system is developed. For verification, an experiment is also carried out with an RP fabricated SL mold.
It is seen that a conventional simulation using current injection molding software breaks down for a photopolymer mold. It is assumed that this is due to the distortion in the mold caused by the temperature and load conditions of injection. The three-step approach also has much deviation. The developed model gives results closer to experimental.
Improvement in thermal conductivity of the photopolymer significantly increases part quality. Since the effect of temperature seems to be more dominant than that of pressure (load), an improvement in the thermal conductivity of the photopolymer can improve the part quality significantly.
Rapid Prototyping (RP) is a technology makes it possible to manufacture prototypes quickly and inexpensively, regardless of their complexity. Rapid Tooling (RT) is the next step in RP’s steady progress and much work is being done to obtain more accurate tools to define the parameters of the process. Existing simulation tools can not provide the researcher with a useful means of studying relative changes. An integrated model, such as the one presented in this paper, is necessary to obtain accurate predictions of the actual quality of final parts. In the future, we expect to see this work expanded to develop simulations program for injection into RP molds manufactured by other RT processes. 注塑模具工艺英文文献和中文翻译(5):http://www.youerw.com/fanyi/lunwen_11242.html