Evaluation of filling conditions of injection moulding by integrating numerical simulations and experimental tests

The authors propose an integrated approach to evaluate gating system configurations to optimize the filling conditions of thermoplastic injection moulded parts. Through data integration between the finite element (FE) analysis and the Design of Experiment approach, the filling of parts with complex geometries was studied to optimize injection process parameters and improve the product quality. The numerical simulation of an injection moulding process allows the evaluation of the component manufacturability at the early stage of the development cycle, without fabricating prototypes and minimizing experimental tests. Normally, the FE analysis interests concerns filling, post-filling and cooling phases of the injection process. Using the FE system, a deeper investigation of stress and strain distributions can be performed to predict defect presence in the final product. However, this methodology is sensitive to existing differences between property of the real part and of its model (material, geometry, etc.).