Abstract
Recently, in a mass production system, SMC is being applied for various products such as automobile parts, since it has advantageous mechanical properties. However, faults, such as sink marks, brittle resin rich regions and the reduction of strength at the weld line, are caused by its heterogeneous flow during the process of compression moulding. So it is very important to clear the flow process.
In this paper, at first, in order to clarify the flow state changed by charge pattern, numerical analysis was executed by FEM based on a two-dimensional steady flow model, using the concept of branching flow according to the equivalence of stress gradient at the divergence point of the advance flow front to two-directions. In order to verify this numerical analysis, the visual observation was carried out. Parameters for the analysis were fillet radius and charge pattern.
The results of the numerical flow analysis taking into consideration the distribution of flow rate at the divergence were good agreement with the experimental results, and so this analysis was found useful to various charge patterns in compression moulding.
