抄録
The most common method of heating polymer sheet for thermoforming is radiative heating. In this paper, the radiative heating of opaque thermoplastic sheet has been studied by using numerical modeling. The evolution of sheet temperature upon heating, both at the surface and through the thickness, was computed assuming one-dimensional transient heat conduction with radiative boundary conditions. The development of an experimental capability to monitor polymer sheet temperature distributions in real-time during thermoforming processes was also completed. For a sample non-homogeneous heating pattern, numerically predicted polymer sheet temperatures are presented and compared with corresponding experimental results. An evaluation of the effects of using different radiation models are also included.
