Three dimensional viscoelastic simulation of thin-wall injection moulding with micro-features

Dedicated simulations software fail to correctly describe me melt flow in microstructures, mainly because phenomena such as tendency of polymers to slip in microchannels, micro scale surface effects and micro scale rheological behaviour are not considered. It is conjectured that wall slip would more easily occur in micro channels based on die viscoelastic behaviour of the polymer. Numerical simulations on a micro component are carried out according to the viscoelastic models implemented in Ansys Polyflow® and compared to the experimental results. Viscoelastic data are obtained from a careful material characterization conducted on a rotational and a capillary rheometers.