Thermoplastic materials are one of the largest categories of materials to be injection molded. Moisture-sensitive materials can lead to issues in the molding process. Simulation of the injection molding process requires sophisticated and exact material properties to be measured. This presentation discusses the testing required to characterize a thermoplastic material for use in SIGMASOFT, as well as the effects of moisture on viscosity measurement of a moisture-sensitive material. Consequences of basing designs on wet or dry materials are covered. Implementation of material data into the software to produce a successful injection molding simulation simulation is described.
Optical strain measurement for the mechanical characterization of polymers, and in particular of polyolefins, is becoming a common practice to determine the parameters to be used in a finite element analysis of crash problems. This experimental technique allows measuring the strain locally on the specimen, so that it is particularly suitable when the deformation is localized, as in the case of polymers: therefore a more accurate description of the behaviour of the material is obtained. By so doing, it is possible to describe the material constitutive law in terms of the true, local strain and of the true stress. As these data are those needed by the most complete material models developed for impact calculation, it is clear that this technique is particularly suitable for coupling with the most advanced material models currently available in the F.E. codes, as for instance with Mat 187 (SAMP-1) of LS-Dyna. The local measurement of the strain can also be used for evaluating the volume strain, whose evolution with the increasing strain shows that for PP-based material the deformation is not isochoric in most the cases. The observed increase in the material volume reflects the fact that voids generate and coalesce within the material, possibly resulting in fracture. The measure of the volume strain, computed as the trace of the strain tensor, is here used for determining the damage function utilized by the damage model implemented in SAMP-1. The effective stress is here estimated as the stress which would be measured if the deformation was isochoric, and it can be assessed on the basis of the measurement of the longitudinal local strain only. Corresponding to each value of longitudinal strain, the volume strain is then used to calculate the ratio between the effective and the true stress. Adopting this procedure, the damage function is thus determined without the needs of repeated loading-unloading tests used to derive the damage parameter from the unloading slope, which is furthermore difficult to be measured. As an application, the results of the numerical reproduction of a benchmark test, consisting in a drop test on a polypropylene box, are presented and discussed
Glass-fiber-reinforced polypropylene (GF PP) materials are increasingly being used by customers to replace metal and engineering polymers in structural automotive applications. Like all glass-fiber reinforced thermoplastics, GF PP products can show anisotropy caused by fiber orientation that is induced by the injection process. Taking into account fiber orientation in the simulations enables designers to improve the accuracy of the analyses. This can help prevent arbitrary choices and assumptions when setting material parameters, which become mandatory when an isotropic material law is used. The method proposed in this paper takes advantage of the availability within Ls-dyna of an anisotropic material law (MAT_103), which allows simplified modeling to address critical issues. This law was not developed to address the problem discussed here.
Therefore, this paper illustrates a simplified approach. The presence of glass reinforced fibers is taken into account by running a mold-filling analysis, and then transferring the material flow orientation in to the structural simulation as a material angle. The dependence of the material failure strain on the material orientation can be also easily modeled through a user subroutine. Finally, the approach only requires simple material data based on basic tensile tests; the material law parameters are then identified through optimization techniques. Although this approach is based on some simplifying assumptions, its application is quick and can help the designer obtain more accurate results with respect to the traditional isotropic approach. A selection of validation tests is then proposed that show reliable predictions using limited additional computational effort.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Today the automotive industry is faced with the demand to build light fuel-efficient vehicles while
optimizing its crashworthiness and stiffness. A wide variety of new metallic and polymeric materials
have been introduced to account for these increased requirements. Numerical analysis can
significantly support this process if the analysis is really predictive. Within the numerical model a
correct characterization of the material behaviour – including elasto-viscoplastic behaviour and failure
- is substantial. The particular behaviour of each material group must be covered by the material
model.
The user material model MF GenYld+CrachFEM allows for a modular combination of
phenomenological models (yield locus, strain hardening, damage evolution, criteria for fracture
initiation) to give an adequate representation of technical materials. This material model can be linked
to LS-DYNA when using the explicit-dynamic time integration scheme.
This paper gives an overview on the material characterization of ultra high strength steels (with focus
on failure prediction), non-reinforced polymers (with focus on anisotropic hardening of polymers), and
structural foams (with focus on compressibility and stress dependent damage evolution) with respect
to crash simulation. It will be shown that a comprehensive material model - including damage and
failure behaviour - enables a predictive simulation without iterative calibration of material parameters.
A testing programme has been done for each material group in order to allow a fitting of the
parameters of the material model first. In a second step different component tests have been carried
out, which were part of a systematic procedure to validate the appropriate predictions of the crash
behaviour with LS-Dyna and user material MF_GenYld+CrachFEM for each material group."
"Reliable prediction of the behavior of structures made from polymers is a topic under considerable investigation in
engineering practice. Especially, if the structure is subjected to dynamic loading, constitutive models considering
the mechanical behavior properly are still not available in commercial finite element codes yet. In our paper, we
present a new constitutive law for polymers which recovers important phenomena like necking, crazing, strain rate
dependency, unloading behavior and damage. In particular, different yield surfaces in compression and tension and
strain rate dependent failure, the latter with damage induced erosion, is taken into account. All relevant parameters
are given directly in the input as load curves, i.e. time consuming parameter identification is not necessary. Moreover,
the models by von Mises and Drucker-Prager are included in the description as special cases.
With the present formulation, standard verification test can be simulated successfully: tensile and compression test,
shear test and three point bending tests."
"Reliable prediction of damage and failure in structural parts is a major challenge posed
in engineering mechanics. Although solid material models predicting the deformation
behaviour of a structure are increasingly available, reliable prediction of failure remains
still open.
With SAMP (a Semi-Analytical Model for Polymers), a general and flexible plasticity
model is available in LS-DYNA since version 971. Although originally developed for
plastics, the plasticity formulation in SAMP is generally applicable to materials that
exhibit permanent deformation, such as thermoplastics, crushable foam, soil and metals.
In this paper, we present a generalized damage and failure procedure that has been implemented
in SAMP and will be available in LS-DYNA soon. In particular, important
effects such as triaxiality, strain rate dependency, regularization and non-proportional
loading are considered in SAMP. All required physical material parameters are provided
in a user-friendly tabulated way. It is shown that our formalism includes many different
damage and failure models as special cases, such as the well-known formulations by
Johnson-Cook, Chaboche, Lemaitre and Gurson among others. "
