A Simulation Study of the Injection Molded Syndiotactic Polystyrene Crystallization Process 1

Abstract

Simulation assisted study of injection molded semicrystalline polymer components has become increasingly important as a result of its increasing impact on polymer processing and manufacturing technologies. Most existing simulations, however, are still fulfilled via 2-dimensional (2D) mathematical models based on the Hele-Shaw flow theory which cannot approximate real time 3-dimensional (3D) polymer flow accurately in many cases. The primary goals of this paper are to introduce and to evaluate a 3D mathematical model through simulations of Syndiotactic Polystyrene crystallization during the injection molding process. The parallel splitting algorithm used significantly reduces the amount of computations and ensures the high quality of simulations. The predicted crystallinity distributions obtained were compared with measured values from experiments, and there was a very satisfactory agreement between the predicted injection molded simulation results and the experimental results.