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Advances in Polymer Processing Technologies: Injection Molding

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Processing and Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 December 2025 | Viewed by 751

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chien-Hsin University of Science and Technology, Taoyuan 320678, Taiwan
Interests: electrical conductivities of fibers; polymers

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With the advances in injection molding technology, several technologies, including conformal cooling channels, molding prediction and optimization, smart molding, rapid heating and cooling, polymer foaming, core back, gas counter pressure, and injection–compression molding, have been introduced to overcome the molding problem. In this Special Issue of Polymers, we will provide some leading knowledge about these techniques. Thus, we seek to spotlight findings that incorporate a wide range of topics. Research articles or reviews concerning the topic are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Shyh-Shin Hwang
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • injection molding
  • foamed polymer
  • gas counter pressure
  • core back
  • smart molding
  • molding prediction and optimization
  • injection–compression molding

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

28 pages, 4538 KB  
Article
Investigation of the Melt-Rotation Effects on Fiber Orientation Variation and Geometrical Shrinkage in FRP Injection-Molded Parts
by Jing-Kai Gao, Fang-Lin Hsieh, Min-Yuan Chien and Chao-Tsai Huang
Polymers 2025, 17(17), 2360; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym17172360 - 30 Aug 2025
Viewed by 545
Abstract
The study focuses on the asymmetric shrinkage typically occurring between the upstream and downstream regions of FRP injection-molded products, a challenge that is particularly difficult to manage and improve. Specifically, two sets of four-cavity systems in one mold were utilized as the experimental [...] Read more.
The study focuses on the asymmetric shrinkage typically occurring between the upstream and downstream regions of FRP injection-molded products, a challenge that is particularly difficult to manage and improve. Specifically, two sets of four-cavity systems in one mold were utilized as the experimental platform. One set used a balanced runner (BR) system, and the other used a non-balanced runner (NBR) system. Each cavity in the four-cavity systems contained an ASTM D638 standard specimen with dimensions of 63.5 mm × 9.53 mm × 3.5 mm. Both CAE simulation and experimental methods were applied. The results show that the filling patterns from the simulation analysis closely matched those from the experimental study for both BR and NBR systems. Furthermore, by comparing the geometric shrinkage of the injected parts, significant differences were observed in the dimensional deformation in three directions (x, y, and z) between the NBR and BR systems. Specifically, at the end of the filling region (EFR), there was no noticeable difference in shrinkage along the flow direction, but the shrinkage in the cross-flow and thickness directions was reduced in the NBR system. Additionally, for the same cavity (1C) in both BR and NBR systems, the melt-rotation effect significantly reduced shrinkage in both the cross-flow and thickness directions. These findings strongly suggest that melt rotation can effectively modify the dimensional shrinkage of injection-molded parts. Moreover, fiber orientation analyses of the 1C cavity were also performed using CAE simulation for both BR and NBR systems. The results show that in the NBR system, the melt-rotation effect substantially alters the fiber orientation. Specifically, the fiber orientation tensors in the cross-flow (A22) direction exhibit a decreasing trend. It can be speculated that the melt rotation alters the flow field, which subsequently changes the fiber orientation by reducing the flow-fiber coupling effect, thereby reducing the upstream-to-downstream asymmetry in the cross-flow direction. Through in-depth analysis, it is demonstrated that the correlation between the macroscopic geometric shrinkage and the microscopic fiber orientation changes is highly consistent. Specifically, in the EFR, ΔA22 decreased by 0.0376, improving upstream/downstream shrinkage asymmetry in the cross-flow direction (Ly). Future work will investigate alternative melt-rotation designs and the optimization of model-internal parameters in FOD prediction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Polymer Processing Technologies: Injection Molding)
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