Measurement and Numerical Simulation of Void and Warpage in Glass Fiber Reinforced Molded Chunky Parts

The aim of this paper is to determine the reason for the large warpage of an injection molded chunky part made of glass fiber reinforced polyamide 6. State of the art commercial 3D injection molding simulation software was used to predict the warpage of the part. While the simulation predicted a product virtually free of warpage the molded parts showed a large deformation. Several molding experiments and X-ray computed tomography (lCT) scans of the moldings have been performed to figure out the reason for this. The lCT scans revealed voids in the thick walls of the part. It was found that these defects were the main cause of the unreliable simulation results. Therefore it is concluded that voids can have a major influence on the reliability of numerical warpage predictions. This paper shows a simplified method to determine the zones were voids will appear and shows the comparison with lCT-data.