This presentation was made at CAASE18, The Conference on Advancing Analysis & Simulation in Engineering. CAASE18 brought together the leading visionaries, developers, and practitioners of CAE-related technologies in an open forum, to share experiences, discuss relevant trends, discover common themes, and explore future issues.

Resource Abstract

New project considers renovating the current Laundry Centre platform for USA market in order to meet new international regulations.
New tub is required, the tub is the bigger plastic component in a laundry centre, and it is a polypropylene homopolymer part with small thickness (2 – 3 mm). One of its mean functions are contain the mix of water and chemicals during the washer cycle and withstand inertial loads generated during spinning cycle, so as a component, it has to meet structural, performance, assembly and cost requirements, in addition, the clamping force capacity of injection machine that is available at facilities must not be exceeded.
Learned lessons, as the use of rheological material characterization as a simulation input and a correlation of the finite element model with current process were applied in this new component development.
Rheological properties of the polypropylene is shown, a better understanding of the material properties that affect the injection process was obtained. A good correlation of the finite element model with the current injection process was obtained also, then, after an iterative process, between structural and injection process simulation, where geometrical and process parameters changes were simulated, final design concept was achieve and released for tooling manufacturing.
Then, at facilities, tubs were injected, in order to validate the design concept by a laundry centre prototypes building, machine clamping force limit was not exceeded and dimensional requirements were met, finally, a set of reliability test were completed without failures, so structural and performance requirement were accomplished too. As a result, an optimized tub design was completed.
As a conclusion, in early development stages, injection process simulations allowed a quick and effective process for design concept iteration, additionally experimental work is important, material characterization and the finite element model correlation with the real process provides to the team with major certainty in the moment of design concept release.