August 24, 2015 | by Sigmasoft | views 3540
The tempering layout for injection molds is often designed departing from previous experiences. The manufacturing feasibility is the main driver when deciding where to place cooling lines. However, often the relevance of the tempering in the process profitability or in the part quality is underestimated, and due to the lack of better information sometimes the resulting tempering performs far from the optimum. As a consequence, the molding efficiency is reduced, the part quality is compromised and, once the mold is already built, sometimes expensive trial-and-error is required to bring the mold to an optimum configuration.
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Rheology
Thermal
Plastics
Automotive
Biomedical
Injection Molding
SIGMASOFT
Newsletters
August 24, 2015 | by Sigmasoft | views 3837
As the demand for functional integration and the need of design differentiation in manufactured products increase, the complexity of plastic parts increases as well; thus some previous knowledge on effective ejection systems becomes insufficient and the challenges in the design of ejection systems grow consistently.
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Rheology
Plastics
Rubbers
Visco-elastic
Automotive
Biomedical
Injection Molding
SIGMASOFT
Newsletters
August 24, 2015 | by Sigmasoft | views 3879
The profitability of a molded rubber product depends to a large extent on the mold efficiency. To achieve the maximum productivity, besides the larges possible number of cavities it is desirable to minimize the rubber consumption and to produce parts without defects.
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Rheology
Rubbers
Automotive
Biomedical
Injection Molding
SIGMASOFT
Newsletters
August 24, 2015 | by Altair Engineering | views 3219
Import your Matereality CAE Material cards directly into HyperWorks.
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Presentations
August 10, 2015 | by Tony Abbey | views 3220
Even with powerful modern computers, there is often a motivation to use simplifying techniques in structural finite element analysis (FEA).
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Structural Analysis
August 10, 2015 | by Tony Abbey | views 4172
I was recently tasked with creating material to explain what Verification and Validation (V&V) are in relation to FEA (finite element analysis).
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Validation
July 31, 2015 | by Massimo Nutini | views 3517
Questo articolo si propone di illustrare l’importanza dell’utilizzo di metodi per la misura
delle proprietà locali del materiale per determinarne la legge di comportamento.
Vengono di seguito presentati alcuni esempi che evidenziano quanto più accurate
e realistiche siano le simulazioni numeriche di test di trazione ad alta velocità su provini
di poliolefine, quando vengano utilizzate proprietà dei materiali rilevate con misure locali,
utilizzando metodi ottici. La disponibilità di misure locali e più accurate evidenzia come sia
necessario che nei codici di calcolo commerciali vengano implementate delle leggi
di materiale più sofisticate di quelle disponibili attualmente, che sono state per lo più
originariamente sviluppate per materiali metallici, e dunque non riescono sempre a predire
correttamente il comportamento dei componenti in materiali polimerici.
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Mechanical
Plastics
Rate Dependency
Automotive
High Speed Testing
LS-DYNA
Research Papers
July 31, 2015 | by Massimo Nutini | views 3743
Notwithstanding the increasing demand for polymeric materials in an
extraordinary variety of applications, the engineers have often only limited tools suitable for
the design of parts made of polymers, both in terms of mathematical models and reliable
material data, which together constitute the basis for a finite-elements based design.
Within this context, creep modelling constitutes a clear example of the needs for a more
refined approach. An accurate prediction of the creep behaviour of polymers would definitely
lead to a more refined design and thus to a better performance of the polymeric components.
However, a limited number of models is available within the f.e. codes, and when the model
complexity increases, it becomes sometimes difficult fitting the models parameters to the
experimental data.
In order to predict the polymer creep behaviour, this paper proposes a solution based on
artificial neural networks, where the experimental creep curves are used to determine the
parameters of a neural network which is then simply implemented in an Abaqus user
subroutine.
This allows to avoid the implementation of a complex material law and also the difficulties
related to match the experimental data to the model parameters, keeping easily into account
the dependence on stress and temperature.
After a discussion of the selection of the appropriate network and its parameters, an example
of the application of this approach to polyolefins in a simplified test case is presented.
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Mechanical
Plastics
Automotive
Biomedical
Structural Analysis
Abaqus
Research Papers
Validation
July 30, 2015 | by Helmut Gese | views 3333
"In sheet-metal-forming the forming limit curve (FLC) is used for ductile sheets to predict fracture in deep drawing.
However the use of the FLC is limited to linear strain paths. The initial FLC cannot be used in a complex nonlinear
strain history of a deep drawing process or a successive stamp and crash process including a significant change in
strain rate. The CRACH software has been developed to predict the forming limit of sheets for nonlinear strain paths
[1]. It has been validated to predict instability for bilinear strain paths with static loading in the first path and
dynamic loading in the second path for mild steels [2].
As the postprocessing of strain paths from single finite elements in CRACH is not economic for industrial
applications MATFEM initiated a project to couple CRACH directly with FEM-Code LS-DYNA using a userdefined
material model. This allows a prediction of possible failure during the simulation for all elements with
respect to their complete strain history. A special strategy has been developed to include CRACH without extensive
increase in total CPU time. The developed interface to LS-DYNA allows also the implementation of other failure
criteria demanding the history of deformation like for example a tensorial fracture criterion.
In order to test the reliability of the calculated safety factor experimental tests for bilinear strain paths have been
simulated [2]. In this case the experimental and numerical investigations have been made on two-stage forming
processes (static in the 1st stage and both static/dynamic in the 2nd stage) . The static-static case should simulate a
stamping process with bilinear strain path. The static-dynamic case should simulate a successive stamp and crash
process.
The simulation of a complex deep drawing problem including areas with significantly nonlinear strain paths has
been simulated with LS-DYNA/CRACH-coupling. It can be shown that the prediction of CRACH can differ
significantely from a “standard” prediction based on the initial FLC.
The coupling of LS-DYNA and CRACH showed the potential to predict possible fracture in deep drawing and crash
loading at an early design stage and allowed to optimise geometry and material quality to significantly reduce later
problems in real components."
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Mechanical
Metals
Rate Dependency
Yielding/Failure analysis
Automotive
High Speed Testing
LS-DYNA
Research Papers