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Effect of Stress Relaxation on shrinkage and warpage of injection molded

plastics

Conference Paper · May 2018

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 EFFECT OF STRESS RELAXATION ON SHRINKAGE AND WARPAGE OF
INJECTION MOLDED PARTS
Zhiliang Fan, Russell Speight
Autodesk Australia Pty Ltd, Moldflow R&D Center, 259 Colchester Rd, Kilsyth VIC 3137, Australia
Abstract
The residual stresses in the injection molding process are
built up due to the restriction of thermal contraction during
the process, coupled with the frozen layer growth with
varying pressure history. The stress relaxation behavior of
plastic materials complicates the stress field. A three-
dimensional linear anisotropic thermo-viscoelastic residual
stress model is developed for predicting the effect of stress
relaxation on shrinkage and warpage of injection molded
parts. Thermo-rheological simplicity is assumed for the
material, and the viscoelastic master curve is fitted with a
generalized Maxwell model. A time-temperature shift
factor table over the range of temperatures which occur
during the injection molding process is preferred over the
WLF equation and Arrhenius equation due to its general
applicability. Two numerical examples are given, and the
simulation result comparison between the thermo-
viscoelastic model and thermo-viscous-elastic model
shows that stress relaxation reduces the molded-in residual
stresses slightly, and has a modest impact on shrinkage and
warpage. The validation cases also confirm that the simple
thermo-viscous-elastic residual stress model is generally
able to give a good qualitative and reasonable quantitative
prediction of the final shrinkage, warpage and molded-in
residual stresses.
Introduction
The high expense of creating an injection mold and the
likelihood that a problem discovered in production will
result in costly retooling and lost time makes molding
simulation highly valuable to industry. It is well known
that the relationship between injection molding process
variables and shrinkage and warpage of parts is extremely
complex [1,2,3]. Numerical simulation of polymer
injection molding has been widely used in industry as a
tool for determining residual stress, shrinkage and
warpage, improving and optimizing product and mold
design [1,2,3,4,5].
Injection molded parts are constrained in the mold
during the process, and the shrinkage of the solidified
layers is prevented. There are several mechanisms
preventing shrinkage of the solidified layers while the part
is still in the mold. Firstly, adhesion to the mold walls
prevents (at least the outer skin of) the solid layers from
moving; and secondly, the newly formed solid surface will
be kept fixed by the stretching forces of the melt pressure.
In addition, geometric constraints also play a critical role
of preventing shrinkage of the solidified layers while still
in the mold.
The thermally and pressure-induced residual stresses in
the injection molding process are built up due to the
restriction of thermal contraction during the process,
coupled with frozen layer growth with varying pressure
history [6]. The residual stresses are affected by different
process conditions such as melt temperature, mold
temperature, injection velocity, packing pressure, packing
time and cooling time. The stress relaxation occurs as the
hot polymer is cooled down to room temperature, which
also complicates the stress field.
Much research work has been done on predicting the
residual stresses using either analytical or numerical
calculations for thermally and pressure induced stresses, in
which more or less sophisticated constitutive equations are
used [6,7,8,9,10]. They are mainly focused on midplane
shell model. On the other hand, the true three-dimensional
(3D) solution on the solid models created by part designers
is a natural choice for considering the complex three-
dimensional effect in the injection molding simulation [4].
For the insert and multi-shot injection over-molding
processes, the true 3D analysis could be the only feasible
solution [5]. As computer power increases, and algorithm
speed improves, 3D simulations of injection molding
processes have become a mainstream application in
industries, though the high gradient variation of velocity
and temperature in gap-wise directions necessitates the use
of many layers of tetrahedral elements across the part
thickness.
The 3D anisotropic thermo-viscous-elastic residual
stress model was developed [11], in which all viscoelastic
effect of materials is neglected and stress relaxation is not
considered. The validation cases showed that this
simplified thermo-viscous-elastic model, which requires a
much simpler material characterization than thermo-
viscoelastic model, is generally able to give a good
qualitative and reasonable quantitative prediction of the
final shrinkage, warpage and molded-in residual stresses.
This paper aims to evaluate the effect of stress relaxation
on molded-in residual stress, shrinkage and warpage of
injection molded plastics parts. A three-dimensional linear
anisotropic thermo-viscoelastic residual stress model is
developed for this purpose. The thermo-rheological
simplicity is assumed for the material, and the viscoelastic
master curve is fitted with a generalized Maxwell model.
Tabulated time-temperature shift factors are preferred over
the WLF equation and Arrhenius equation due to its
general applicability.
Two injection molding cases are simulated through the
filling, packing and cooling stages. The stress relaxation
effect on the shrinkage and molded-in residual stresses is
investigated numerically by comparing the predicted
results from the thermo-viscoelastic model and thermo-
viscous-elastic model.
dependence of a material. The relaxation spectrum over a
wide range of time and for the range of temperatures which
occur during the injection molding process. The actual
experiments are done within a narrow range of time with
various temperatures. The time-temperature superposition
is used to obtain a single master curve, which represents
the relaxation spectrum at reference temperature. The
master curve can be fitted to a Prony series representing
the generalized Maxwell Model (Figure 1). The general
equation can be expressed:

Simulation Technology where G(t) is relaxation modulus at time t , which is

evaluated at reference temperature. G(0) is the instant
In-cavity residual stresses are built up during modulus. N is the number of spring-dashpot Maxwell
solidification. Due to the nature of constrained quenching, elements used, is the long-term dimensionless
the distribution of the residual stresses is largely modulus, represents the relaxation times, and is the
determined by the varying pressure history, coupled with relative dimensionless modulus.
frozen layer growth. The in-mold residual stress will relax
a certain amount depending on the temperature history
during cooling, and it can only be predicted by the thermo-
viscoelastic model. The linear viscoelastic constitutive
behaviour of the material is described by the following
equation:

Figure 1. Generalized Maxwell model

The time-temperature shift factor represents the

temperature dependence of a material, which is obtained at
forming the master curve. An example of a typical shift
factor-temperature data is plotted in Figure 2.
where Ts is the solidification temperature, a critical criteria
to determine the point of the liquid-solid phase change.
This model assumes that the material behaves like a linear
viscoelastic solid below the solidification temperature, and
like a generalized Newtonian fluid at a temperature above
Ts. The tensor Cijkl is the viscoelastic relaxation modulus
of the material, and the tensor  ij defines thermal
characteristics of the material which is related to thermal
coefficient of expansion. The material is assumed to be
thermo-rheologically simple and therefore the time-
temperature superposition (TTS) principle is used to
account for the temperature dependence of the material
response. In the above equation,  is the pseudo-time Figure 2. Time-Temperature shift factor
defined as For polymer materials, two commonly-used models for
t the shift factor are the WLF model and the Arrhenius
1
 (t )   dt  (2) model. As we can see from Figure 2, it is not appropriate to
a
0 T fit the shift factor data to a single model over a complete
where aT is the time-temperature shift factor. temperature range, though it is quite common that only one
set of shift factor parameters is given in literature or
The viscoelastic characterization of a material is material database. A more rational approach is to use two
required for the thermo-viscoelastic model. It is to different models for fitting the shift factors over two
determine the relaxation spectrum and the temperature different temperature ranges. For example, for amorphous
material, the WLF equation can be used to describe the Rheometrics Dynamic Spectrometer in the Autodesk
time-temperature shift factor with the temperature ranging Moldflow laboratory, and the relaxation spectrum at
from Tg to Tg+100o C. For temperatures outside the above reference temperature and a table-form time-temperature
range, an Arrhenius expression can be used. To avoid shift factor are obtained.
introducing errors during the model fitting, a tabulated
form for describing the temperature-dependence of the
shift factors is preferred as the input in our implementation.

An incremental constitutive equation can be derived

from the linear thermo-viscoelastic equation (1), in which
the stress state at time can be evaluated from the
known stress state at the previous time step.

Figure 3. Tagdie model

Mold Temperature 55C

Melt Temperature 250C
Injection Time 0.86S
Packing time 20S
Packing Pressure 60MPa
Cooling time 5S or 20S
where is the stress increment within this time step,
Table 1. Processing setting details
is the tangent viscoelastic relaxation modulus, is
the tensor of thermal coefficients of expansion, is the The analyses are done on two different cooling times of
strain increment, and is the vector which depends on 5 seconds and 20 seconds. The thermo-viscous-elastic
the stress at the beginning of the time step and temperature model predicts a parallel shrinkage of 0.38 in both cases.
increment during the time step. On the other hand, the parallel shrinkages simulated from
the thermo-viscoelastic model are 0.35 and 0.34
A three-dimensional (3D) anisotropic thermo- respectively. It indicates that the viscoelastic solution
viscoelastic residual stress model has been implemented predicts less shrinkage than viscous-elastic model due to
based on the formulations (1) to (6). It is used to calculate the stress relaxation effect, and the difference is about
the initial stresses as the driving force for the shrinkage and 7.9% and 10.5% respectively.
warpage of an injection-molded plastics part in a 3D
solution. The model is applicable to both amorphous Predicted shrinkage Predicted shrinkage
materials and semi-crystalline materials with or without Model Cooling time: 5S Cooling time: 20S
fillers. Viscoelastic 0.35 0.34
Model
Numerical Examples and Discussions Viscous- 0.38 0.38
elastic Model
Two numerical cases are presented to evaluate the
effect of stress relaxation on molded-in residual stresses Table 2. Predicted parallel shrinkage
and shrinkage by comparing the results between the If using the thermo-viscous-elastic solution, the parallel
thermo-viscous-elastic solution and the thermo-viscoelastic shrinkage value stays the same, as the tagdie is fully frozen
solution. Effect of pressure and thermal history and stress early, and 15 seconds of extra cooling time has no effect on
build-up and relaxation are taken into account through the the residual stress results. Thermo-viscoelastic model can
simulation of the filling, packing and cooling stages of consider further stress relaxation during the extra cooling
injection molding process. time in the mold, which predicts a slight further reduction
in shrinkage.
Case 1. Tagdie Model

The first case is to check how the stress relaxation Case 2. Rectangular Strip
affects the shrinkage in a simple tagdie mold (Figure 3).
The material is PC+ABS, Multilon TN-7500MC from The case is a rectangular strip part, molded using an
Teijin Chemicals. The processing conditions are given in ABS material, Novodur P2X of Bayer (Figure 4). The
Table 1. The viscoelastic property is measured using a processing conditions and measurement of the
residual stresses with the layer removal method were
reported in detail in reference [9]. The mold cooling was
slightly asymmetrical, with wall temperatures of
51.85°C/47.85°C.
There are two time-temperature shift equations for
shifting the relaxation data to the appropriate temperature
in [9]: the WLF-shift is used when T is not less than Tg,
and a special exponential relationship is used when T is
less than Tg. In our implementation, only the tabulated
form, WLF equation and Arrhenius equation are
implemented, and therefore these two shift equations of the
material are replaced with an equivalent tabulated
temperature-time shift relationship in Table 3, which can
be readily used for our algorithm.
elements in the mesh. Both the thermo-viscous-elastic
residual stress model and the thermo-viscoelastic residual
stress model were run.
The predicted gap-wise molded-in residual stress profiles
in parallel and perpendicular directions at a position
between P2 and P3, where the stress measurement bars
were cut out, are shown in Figures 5 and 6. The measured
residual stress results from [9] are also shown in the
figures. Both models obviously predict the correct residual
stress pattern. The final stress profile shows that some
tensile stresses have been built up in the surface layer,
followed by a compressive stress region further inward,
then a tensile stress region in the core. This kind of stress
profile is typical for injection-molded parts, which is
closely associated with the relatively low pressure under
which the skin and core have frozen, and high pressure
when the intermediate region has frozen. In addition, the
model also correctly predicted the slightly asymmetrical
stress distribution due to the slightly asymmetrical cooling.

Figure 4. Rectangular strip mold (dimensions are in mm)

Temperature (C) Shift Factor
30 9.625e9
50 1.333e7
70 18465.0
80 687.207 Figure 5. Molded-in residual stress profile in parallel
90 25.576 direction (unit: MPa)
99.85 1.000
The thermo-viscoelastic residual stress model predicts
105 0.0394
lower tensile and compressive residual stress than the
115 0.000342
thermo-viscous-elastic residual stress model. This is purely
Table 3. Temperature-time shift factor table due to the stress relaxation effect. The magnitude of stress
relaxation in the surface layer is more significant as these
layers are frozen and in-cavity stress build-up in the mold
4.706e-9 6.058e-2 has occurred earlier than core layers, and it has undergone
4.410e-6 1.037e-1 a long stress relaxation time at a relatively high
2.082e-3 3.467e-1 temperature. The predicted shrinkage from the thermo-
6.198e-1 4.884e-1 viscoelastic model is about 17% smaller than that from the
3.305e6 4.266e-4 thermo-viscous-elastic model due to the stress relaxation
2.746e8 1.415e-4 effect.
Table 4. Dimensionless relaxation spectrum data
This case was used for validation of the thermo-viscous-
elastic residual stress model [11], in which 10-layer
The dimensionless relaxation spectrum data for tetrahedral elements were used in the modelling. With
equation (3) is listed in table 4, with the long-term mesh and time-step refinement and some algorithm
dimensionless modulus equal to zero. For better enhancements, predicted molded-in residual stress results
capturing the pressure and temperature history and frozen using the thermo-viscous-elastic solution have been
layer growth in a gap-wise direction, 20 layers of improved. In particular, the predicted pattern and
tetrahedral elements are used. There are 520311 tetrahedral
 magnitude along the skin layers are better than what
reported in [11].
Figure 6. Molded-in residual stress profile in perpendicular
direction (unit: MPa)
Summary
The 3D anisotropic thermo-viscoelastic residual stress
model has been developed for tracing complex thermally-
induced and pressure-induced stress build-up and
relaxation. The viscoelastic master curve is fitted with a
generalized Maxwell model and tabulated temperature-
time shift factors are preferred. The numerical examples
indicate that the present method can be used to predict the
shrinkage and warpage of injection molded parts with
complex three-dimensional geometry.
By comparing the predicted residual stress and
shrinkage results from the thermo-viscous-elastic model
and the thermo-viscoelastic model, it is shown that stress
relaxation reduced residual stresses slightly except in
surface layers where the stress relaxation effect is larger.
The effect of stress relaxation on shrinkage is modest in the
numerical examples.
It is worth mentioning that the numerical examples in
this paper are only limited to unfilled amorphous materials.
The ongoing validation work includes the investigation on
the performance of the developed anisotropic thermo-
viscoelastic model on semi-crystalline materials and fiber-
filled materials.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge with deep
appreciation our colleagues in the Autodesk Moldflow
solver and validation groups for stimulating discussions.
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