2000 年 12 巻 6 号 p. 346-355
A high level cleanliness is required in polymer processing environments in order to obtain reliability in advanced applications for plastic components such as packages of electronic devices and optical elements. It is important to know contamination particle behavior during injection molding machine operations. From the view point of practical research, the actual movements of articles originating in the sliding elements of the machine were measured in the processing environment. Particle movements were theoretically analyzed using aerodynamics and numerical analysis methods of air turbulent flows and particle concentrations. Comparing these calculated results for particle concentration with those from particle number measurements, the proposed numerical analyses were confirmed to be effective for use in contamination control during polymer processing environments. Furthermore, it was suggested theoretically that heat convection around heated molds was closely related to movements of small sized particles, and was one of the important factors for realization of cleanliness in polymer processing environments.