Design automation of valve gate locations and open timing for injection molding of an automotive instrument panel

Valve gate locations and open timing for injection molding of an automotive instrument panel is to be determined to minimize the cavity pressure. To achieve design automation for obtaining the solution of this design problem, we first integrated MAPS-3D, a commercial injection molding analysis tool, to PIAnO, a commercial process integration and design optimization (PIDO) tool, using the file parsing technique. Then, we automated an iterative analysis and design procedure using a batch run capability provided by PIAnO. To obtain the optimal design solution, we employed a metamodel-based design optimization method combining an experimental design, a metamodel and an optimization algorithm available in PIAnO. Using the proposed design automation approach, the cavity pressure was found to decrease by 34.2% compared to the initial one, which clearly shows the validity of the proposed approach.