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Design and analysis of injection molding of mineral water bottle cap

Article  in  International Journal of Applied Engineering Research · January 2011

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International Journal of Applied Engineering Research
ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 6, Number 8 (2011) pp. 1525-1534
© Research India Publications
http://www.ripublication.com/ijaer.htm

Design and Analysis of Injection Molding of Mineral

Water Bottle Cap

P. Ravinder Reddy1, Hemendra Kr. Srivastava2 and S.S. Hebbal2

1
Professor & Head, Mechanical Engineering,
Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology, Hyderabad-500075, A.P., India.
E-mail:[email protected]
2
Asst. Professor, Pranveersing Institute of Technology, Bhauti, Kanpur, India
E-mail: [email protected]
3
Professor&Head,
Mechanical Engineering, PDA Engineering, Gulbarga, India

Abstract

Injection molding is the most important process in the manufacturing of

plastic parts by forcing melted plastic in to a mold cavity until it cools and
forms a specific plastic shape. Plastic injection molding is very useful when
the plastic parts that need to be produced are too complex or expensive to do
by machine. The plastic used is the thermo-plastic (HDPE) as these materials
soften when heated and re-harden when cooled. No chemical changes take
place when the material is heated or cooled, the change being entirely
physical. For this reason, the softening and re-hardening cycle is repeated any
number of times. In this work, the stress analysis of cap cavity plate under the
pressure is considered, in addition to this thermal analysis is carried out at
injection temperature 2200C and mold temperature 200C. Cap is modeled in
pro-engineer software and the meshing is carried in Hyper mesh 7.0 and
analysis is carried out in Ansys 11.0. The deformations and stresses induced
due to structural and thermal loading is illustrated and discussed.

Introduction
The Injection moulding process is the process of forcing molten plastic into a mold
cavity. Once the plastic has cooled, the part can be ejected. This is often used in mass
production and prototyping. It is a relatively new way to manufacture parts. The first
injection molding machines were built in the 1930's. Research has attempted to
dynamically control the thermal and fluid properties of the melt within the molding
cycle. While dynamic pressure control has been proven feasible and is being
1526 P. Ravinder Reddy et al

commercialized, the size of the mold, together with its high heat capacity and thermal
inertia, prevents dynamic closed loop control of the mold surface in all but long cycle
time processes. For instance, Jansen (1995), Chen (1994), and other researchers have
utilized a thermoelectric device within the mold wall to dynamically heat and cool a
portion of the mold [1, 2]. However, the time response of these active control
elements is relatively slow, on the order of seconds.
A Knowledge-Based Tuning Evaluation (KBS) [3] Method is presented which
takes advantage of the a priori knowledge of the process, in the form of a qualitative
model, to reduce the demand for experimentation. The KBT Method provides an
estimate of the process feasible region (process window) as the basis of finding the
suitable setpoints, and updates its knowledgebase using the data that become available
during tuning. As such, the KBT Method has several advantages over conventional
tuning methods: (1) the qualitative model provides a generic form of representation
for linear and nonlinear processes alike, therefore, there is no need for selecting the
form of the empirical model through trial and error, (2) the use of a priori knowledge
eliminates the need for initial trials to construct an empirical model, so an initial
feasible region can be identified as the basis of search for the suitable set points, and
(3) the search within the feasible region leads to a higher fidelity model of this region
when the input/output data from consecutive process iterations are used for learning.
The KBT Method’s utility is demonstrated in production of digital video disks
(DVDs). The selection of a design criterion is a very important activity in the
component design [4]. When dealing with plastic components, this activity must be
more sensible, since these materials have a mechanical behavior very different, for
example, from the metallic materials, which are widely used in the engineering.
Plastic materials are very sensitive to the hydrostatic stress components; thus, the Von
Mises criterion cannot be used in he plastic component design, as it is widely used in
metallic ones. In this case, other criteria must be selected.
In using simulation software for process modelling, a single value for thermal
conductivity is often used. If the thermal conductivity of the material obtained at
ambient conditions is used, then for semi-crystalline materials exhibiting a step
change in values at crystallisation, the variation from the near- ambient thermal
conductivity value would be relatively small, e.g. for HDPE it would be 0.25 W/m K
and for PP it would be 0.30 W/rn K. However, for PET the near-ambient value was
the lowest measured value, being 0.3 W/(m K), with values at higher temperatures
and pressures being up to 0.48 W/(m K). For PS the near-ambient value was 0.17
W/(m K) with values at higher temperatures and pressures up to 0.28 W/(m K). These
equate to variations in values from the ambient conditions values of up to
approximately ± 25% for HDPE and PP materials, and an increase above the ambient
conditions value by up to 60% for PET, 37% for the glass filled nylon, 38% for ABS,
65% for PS and 65% for PC. Such unaccounted for variations in thermal conductivity
are likely to have a significant effect on modeling predictions. However, the shot
weight may increase as a result of the increase in pressure specified, energy
consumption may be greater and warpage / distortion problems are likely to be worse.
Therefore, any economic benefit brought about by a reduction in cycle times would
have to be considered against these additional costs and potentially other factors. By
Design and Analysis of Injection Molding 1527

doing some experimental investigations on plastic injection moulding Mustafa Kurt

and Osaben kamber [5] had tried for quality of molded parts by controlling
parameters of cavity pressure and mold temperature in plastic injection molding
therefore there used sensors for measuring and recording the pressure and temperature
pressure using a ckistler como 2869A injection type apparatus. S.H.Tang and Y.M
Kong[6] has tested the plastic injection mold for producing war page testing specimen
and performing thermal analysis for the mould to access on the effect of thermal
residual stresses in the mold. The technique theory, methods as well as consideration
needed in designing of plastic injection mould are presented. Design of mold was
carried out using commercial Computer Aided Design (CAD) Software Unigraphics
Version13. The model for thermal residual stress analysis due to uneven cooling of
the specimen was developed and solved using commercial FEA software called Lusas
analyst version 13.5. The software provides contour plot of temperature distribution
for the model and also temperature variation through the plastic injection molding
cycle by plotting time response curves.

Material and Properties

Material HDPE-High Density Polyethylene
HDPE is the high density version of pe plastics. It is harder, stronger and a little
heavier than LDPE, but less ductile. It is lighter than water, and can be molded,
machined, and joined together using welding. The appearance is wax-like, lusterless
and opaque. The use of uv-stabilizators (carbon black) improves its weather resistance
but turns it black. Some types can be used in contact with food.

Properties of HDPE
Physical Properties
Density (Kg/Mm3): 0.95e-9
Specific Heat (J/Kg-K): 472.7
Thermal Conductivity (W/Mm-K): 0.0424

Mechanical Properties
Poisons Ratio: 0.46
Coefficient of Friction: 0 .29
Tensile Strength (MPA): 15-40
Modulus of Elasticity (GPA): 0.86
Elongation: 100
Ultimate Tensile Strength (MPA): 30

Material P20 Type Pre-Hardened Mold Steel

P20-type, pre-hardened steel that can be used for all plastic molding. It is the highest
1528 P. Ravinder Reddy et al

quality P20-type mold steel currently available, and is superior to all other P20-type
mold steels in terms of machining, stability, and welding.

Properties of P20 Steel

Mechanical Properties
Tensile Strength (MPA): 834
Modulus of Elasticity (GPA): 186
Elongation (%): 20
Ultimate Tensile Strength (MPA): 961
Thermal Conductivity (W/Mm-K): 0.0424

Problem Specification
Cap is extracted from injection moulding. The injection exerts high pressure and
under high temperature. The design of the die cavity for the cap is critical since cavity
has to withstand the high temperatures and pressures. In this work the die cavity for
the cap is analyzed by using a finite element package ANSYS 10. The deformations
and stresses in the cap cavity plate are found and are discussed.

Methodology
• Selection of the injection moulding machine: it is essential to design the
mould with the machine requirements and capacity of the machine. Before
mould design is commenced, it is necessary to determine the press capacity
that will be required for successful operation. The essential considerations are
shot capacity, plasticising rate, clamping force, injection pressure.
• Number of cavities: the number of cavities in injection moulding machine is
determined in the most cases by the machine performance, but some times by
the moulding shape, mould locking force or the out put required in a given
period.
• Layouts of cavities in multi-impression moulds: this requires considerable
care to achieve the best result. During layout of cavities the consideration to be
borne in mind includes
O Optimum disposition of cavities to achieve minimum overall size of
the moulds.
O Attainment of minimum length of runners to cavities.
O Correct layout of cavities to obtain balanced clamping.

• Design of feed system: there are some considerations to be kept in mind while
designing a feed system for a particular mould.
o The shape and cross-section of the runner.
o The size of the runner and
Design and Analysis of Injection Molding 1529

o The runner layout.

• Design of gate: the gate should be located such that it can be easily removed
without damaging the part and alsoafter de-gating only a small witness mark
will remain on the component.the optimum size of the gate will depend upon
number of factors includes (i)the flow characteristics of the plastic material,
(ii) the mould wall thickness, (iii) the moulding temperature and volume of
moulding etc.
• Design of cooling system: all the injection moulding are generally provided
with cooling in order to solidify the hot plastic material which is injected
inside the cavity During moulding process.cooling is accomplished by a
continuous circulation of chilled water, air or oil flowing through the channel
which are drilled in various portion of the mould in order to control the mould
temperature.
• Design of ejection system: all the thermo-plastic materials contract as they
solidify which means that the moulding will shrink on to the core which forms
on it.this shrinkage makes the moulding difficult to remove.ejection should be
a positive action and ejector pin also placed in a position that the ejection
marks will not be seen on the product when it is in normal use.
• Venting: Venting is of special importance with multiple gating. Vents must be
placed at all points where the plastic fronts coming from different gates meet
to prevent air entrapment, and bad welding of plastics. Venting may also affect
injection speed.

Analysis of Injection Mould

Finite element method has become one of the most widely used techniques, for
analyzing mechanical loading characteristics in modern engineering components.
Traditional analysis techniques can only be satisfactorily applied to a range of
conventional component shapes and specific loading conditions. Unfortunately, the
majority of engineering loading situations are not simple and straight forward
therefore the traditional techniques often need to be modified and compromised to suit
situations for which they were not intend. The uncertainty thus created, commonly
leads to the designer applying excessively high factor of safety to the mechanical
loads and so to over design components by specifying either unnecessarily bulky
cross section or high quality materials, inevitably the cost of the product is adversely
affected.

Geometric Modeling
Modeling has been carried in pro-engineering software. The various parts drawn in
pro-E are cap(Figure1), core and cavity extraction(Figure2), injection mould base
assembly(Figure3) and detailed drawing(Figure4).
1530 P. Ravinder Reddy et al

Figure 1.3: D Model of cap. Figure 2: Modeling core and cavity

extraction.

Sketch of the cap is done in the sketcher part of the Pro-Engineering. The section
of the cap is revolved to 3600 about the central axis to obtain 3D model of cap. The
cap inner wall and outer wall is inclined angle 920. Sketch of the core and cavity is
done in the sketcher part of the Pro-Engineering. The section of the core and cavity is
revolved to 3600 about the central axis to obtain 3D model of core and cavity as
shown in figure2.

Figure 3: Injection mould base assembly. Figure 4: Detailed drawing of assembly.

Assembly is carried out in the assembly module of the Pro-Engineering. Each part
of the assembly i.e., cap, core and cavity are retrieved. The retrieved components can
move freely. One of the components is fixed, i.e., core and cavity inserts is fixed.
Other components are assembled using mate and align option, to the fixed component.
Cap assembly is completed until each component is fully constrained (figure3) .sketch
of the detailed drawing is modelled in the detailing part of the pro-engineering. The
detailing will give the overall views of the assembly and the detailing of assembly is
shown in figure4.
Design and Analysis of Injection Molding 1531

Finite Element Model of Cap-Cavity-Plate

Analysis of the cap is carried over in following steps.

Figure 5: Cap cavity plate. Figure 6: Meshed model of the cavity

plate.

Cap cavity plate model has been modeled in the pro-engineer as shown in figure5.
For performing the analysis over the cap cavity plate a finite element model is
necessary. In order to get the good quality mesh and to maintain the tetrahedron
elements, the cap cavity plate is meshed in hyper mesh 7.0. Hyper mesh 7.0 is the
product from Altair Hyper Works is a commercially available software package. It
mainly used for the finite element modeling of the components. Cap cavity plate as
shown in figure5 is retrieved in hyper mesh using solid 10 node 92 element type(From
Ansys library) is used to mesh the cavity plate and a converged mesh is shown in
figure6. A Solid 10 node 87 element type is used for thermal analysis.

Results and Discussions

The pressue load of 32,36,38,40,42,45,50 MPa is applied and the deformations and
stresses are computed on cap cavity plate.

Figure 7: Displacement variation in cap, Figure 8: Von Mises Stress variation,

mm. MPa.
1532 P. Ravinder Reddy et al

From the resultant displacement variation (figure7) the maximum displacement is

0.001852 mm is at in side of cap when the thickness is 36mm and subjected pressure
is 32MPa. Figure8 shows the maximum von mises stress induced is observed to be
44.545 N/mm2.

Figure 9: Displacement, mm. Figure 10: Vonmises stress, MPa.

From Figure9 and 10, it is observed that the resultant displacement maximum is
0.002083 mm and maximum vonmises stress is 50.113 N/mm2for the thickness of the
plate is 36mm and uniform pressure load of 34 MPa. The variation of the deflection as
load is increased is shown in Table1.

Table 1: Load with Deflection.

Load, MPa 32 36 38 40 42 45 50
Deflection, mmX10-3 1.852 2.083 2.199 2.315 2.43 2.604 2.893

From the table1 it is clear that the pressure is directly proportional to deflection.
As the pressure increases, the deflection also increases. So there is no plastic
deformation in mould it is maintaining the elasticity only as the curve is linear. So
structure will be safe.

Table 2: Displacement and Von-mises stress according to the respective loads.

Load (MPa) Max. displacement, mm Von-mises, MPa Safety/Failure

32 0.001852 44.545 Safe
36 0.002083 50.113 Safe
38 0.002199 52.898 Safe
40 0.002315 55.682 Safe
42 0.002430 58.466 Safe
45 0.002604 62.642 Safe
50 0.002893 69.602 Safe
Design and Analysis of Injection Molding 1533

Table2 shows, the displacement and resultant stress of the injection mould base of
cap under the different load cases. When the cap cavity plate is subjected to the load
32, 36, 38,42,45,50 N/mm2 the assembly is safe as the stress is 44.545, 50.113,
52.898, 58.466, 62.642, 69.602 N/mm2 which is not exceeded to material yield stress
834 N/mm2. When the cap cavity plate is subjected to the load 40N/mm2 the assembly
is safe as the stress is 55.682 N/mm2 is not exceeded to material yield stress 834
N/mm2. It is concluded that where the von mises stress are less than the yield stress
there the mould assembly will be safe. And when the von mises stress are more than
the yield stress than the structure will be failed. Temperature 200C is uniformly
applied to the cap cavity plate and convection temperature 2200C is applied on area of
the component and the results are derived.

Figure 11: Temperature distribution in Figure 12: Thermal flux.

cap cavity plate.

From the figure11, the temperature distribution observed to be between 219.9410C

to the maximum nodal temperature 215.4170C. As shown in figure12 the maximum
thermal flux is 0.0114 W/mm2.

Thermal Flux Calculation:

Thermal conductivity (K): 0.0424W/mm-k
Thickness of plate (t): 36mm

Fourier law
q = -KA dT/dX
Thermal flux (q/A) = K.dT/dX
q/A = 0.0424(219.941-215.417)/36
= 0.00533W/mm2
= 53.3W/m2

From ANSYS results thermal flux = 0.011405 W/mm2 =114.05 W/m2

Percentage of error = 0.006%
 1534 P. Ravinder Reddy et al

From the thermal analysis maximum thermal flux is occurred in the cap cavity
plat has 0.011405 W/mm2.

Conclusions
Static and thermal analysis is carried over the cap cavity plate. The cap cavity plate is
analyzed for different pressure load cases. At a pressure of 40 MPa the maximum
displacement is 0.002315 mm and the maximum stress is found to be 55.682 MPa.
Stresses developed for a pressure of 40 MPa are less than the yield strength (834
MPa) of the material p20 steel. Hence it is concluded that the mould base assembly is
safe. From thermal analysis it is observed that the maximum thermal flux is 0.011405
W/mm2. Stress at the given condition (55.682 MPa) is less than yield strength (834
MPa) of the material. Finally from the results obtained, it is concluded that “the
structure is safe under the given loading conditions”.

References
[1] Chen, S. C. and Y. C. Chung (1994). “Numerical simulations of the cyclic,
transient mold heat transfer in injection model cooling process”. International
Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer 21(3): 323- 332.
[2] Jansen, K. M. B. (1995). “Heat transfer in injection moulding systems with
insulation layers and heating elements”. International Journal of Heat and Mass
Transfer 38(2): 309-316.
[3] T. N. WONG, (1996), “Knowledge-based Evaluation for the Conceptual
Design Development of Injection Molding Parts” KWAI-SANG CHIN City
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
[4] W.N. Mascarenhas a,b, C.H. Ahrens B, A. Ogliari c, “Design criteria and safety
factors for plastic components design” Department of Mechanical Engineering,
NEDIP, Florian opolis, SC, Brazil 7 October 2003.
[5] Mustafa Kurt, O. Saban Kamber, Yusuf Kaynak, Gurcan Atakok, Oguz Girit
Experimental investigation of plastic injection molding: Assessment of the
effects of cavity pressure and mold temperature on the quality of the final
products Marmara University, Technical Education Faculty, 34722 Kadikoy-
Istanbul, Turkey.
[6] S.H. Tang, Y.M. Kong, S.M. Sapuan, R. Samin, S. Sulaiman, “Design and
thermal analysis of plastic injection mould Department of Mechanical and
Manufacturing Engineering”, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang,
Selangor, Malaysia June 2005.
[7] R.G.W. Pye. Injection Mould Design and a Design manual for the
Thermoplastics Industry.
[8] Rosato & Rosato, “Injection Moulding Hand book”.

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