Open Access

ARTICLE

Numerical Simulation of Gas-assisted Injection Molding Process for A Door Handle

by Qiang Li, Jie Ouyang¹, Xuejuan Li², Guorong Wu², Binxin Yang²

1 Corresponding author. Jie Ouyang, Department of Applied Mathematics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710129, China. Tel.: +86 29 8849 5234; fax: +86 29 8849 1000. E-mail: jieouyang@nwpu.edu.cn.
2 Department of Applied Mathematics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710129, China

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2011, 74(3&4), 247-268. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2011.074.247

Abstract

A unified mathematical model is proposed to predict the short shot, primary and secondary gas penetration phenomenon in gas-assisted injection molding (GAIM) process, where the Cross-WLF model and two-domain modified Tait equation are employed to simulate the melt viscosity and density in the whole process, respectively. The governing equations of two-phase flows including gas, air and polymer melt are solved using finite volume method with SIMPLEC technology. At first, two kinds of U-shaped gas channels are modeled, where the shape corner and generous corner cases are studied. At last, as a case study, the short shot, primary and secondary gas penetration processes of a door handle are simulated. The numerical results show that the mathematical model can successfully depict the race-tracking and corner effects, which are very helpful for the design of GAIM.

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