Abstract
A theoretical model was developed to describe the flow behavior of a filled polymer in the packing stage of reaction injection molding and predict the residual stress distribution of thin injection-molded parts. The model predictions were compared with experiments performed for phenol-formaldehyde resin filled with wood dust and cured by urotropine. The packing stage of reaction injection molding process presents a typical example of complex non-isothermal flow combined with chemical reaction. It is shown that the time evolution of pressure distribution along the mold cavity that determines the residual stress in the final product can be described by a single 1D partial differential equation (PDE) if the rheological behavior of reacting liquid is simplistically described by the power-law approach with some approximations made for describing cure reaction and non-isothermality. In the formulation, the dimensionless time variable is defined in such a way that it includes all necessary information on the cure reaction history. Employing the routine separation of variables made possible to obtain the analytical solution for the nonlinear PDE under specific initial condition. It is shown that direct numerical solution of the PDE exactly coincides with the analytical solution. With the use of the power-law approximation that describes highly shear thinning behavior, the theoretical calculations significantly deviate from the experimental data. Bearing in mind that in the packing stage the flow is extremely slow, we employed in our theory the Newtonian law for flow of reacting liquid and described well enough the experimental data on evolution of pressure.
