• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.77-87
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• 2003

The residual stress and birefringence in injection-molded plastic parts can be divided into the flow-induced residual stress and birefringence produced in flowing stage, the thermally-induced residual stress and birefringence produced in cooling stage. However, the physics involved in the generation of the thermally-induced residual stress and birefringence still remains to be understood. Because polymer experiences viscoelastic history near the glass-transition temperature it is hard to model the entire process. Volume relaxation phenomenon was included to predict the final thermally-induced residual stress and birefringence in quenched plastic parts more accurately. The present study focused on comparing the predicted values far thermally-induced residual stress and birefringence with and without volume relaxation behavior (or free volume theory) under free and constrained quenching conditions. As a result, tile residual stress remained as a tensile stress at the center and as a compressible stress near the surface for the free quenching cases. In contract the residual stress remained as a compressible stress at the center and as a tensile stress near the surface fur the constrained quenching cases. The residual birefringence remained as minus values at the center and as plus values near the surface for the free quenching cases. Interestingly the residual birefringence showed minus values in entire zone for the constrained quenching cases. In the prediction of birefringence only the case including free volume theory showed the correct result for the distribution of birefringence in thickness direction.

• Korea-Australia Rheology Journal
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.191-199
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• 2007

Precision injection molding process is of great importance since precision optical products such as CD, DVD and various lens are manufactured by those process. In such products, birefringence affects the optical performance while residual stress that determines the geometric precision level. Therefore, it is needed to study residual stress and birefringence that affect deformation and optical quality, respectively in precision optical product. In the present study, we tried to predict residual stress, final shrinkage and birefringence in injection molded parts in a systematic way, and compared numerical results with the corresponding experimental data. Residual stress and birefringence can be divided into two parts, namely flow induced and thermally induced portions. Flow induced birefringence is dominant during the flow, whereas thermally induced stress is much higher than flow induced one when amorphous polymer undergoes rapid cooling across the glass transition region. A numerical system that is able to predict birefringence, residual stress and final shrinkage in injection molding process has been developed using hybrid finite element-difference method for a general three dimensional thin part geometry. The present modeling attempts to integrate the analysis of the entire process consistently by assuming polymeric materials as nonlinear viscoelastic fluids above a no-flow temperature and as linear viscoelastic solids below the no-flow temperature, while calculating residual stress, shrinkage and birefringence accordingly. Thus, for flow induced ones, the Leonov model and stress-optical law are adopted, while the linear viscoelastic model, photoviscoelastic model and free volume theory taking into account the density relaxation phenomena are employed to predict thermally induced ones. Special cares are taken of the modeling of the lateral boundary condition which can consider product geometry, histories of pressure and residual stress. Deformations at and after ejection have been considered using thin shell viscoelastic finite element method. There were good correspondences between numerical results and experimental data if final shrinkage, residual stress and birefringence were compared.

• International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.17-25
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• 2001

In this paper, a theoretical study has been made to reduce the residual stress and birefringence in the injection-molded parts. An optimization program has been used to minimize the residual stresses and birefringence calculated from a simulation program. The thermally induced stress has been calculated using a linear viscoelasticity model. The flow stress and birefringence has been calculated using the Leonov's viscoelasticity model. This has been applied to the injection molding of a circular disc and a plate. the optimization has been done either by changing process variables while maintaining the mold temperature constant or by varying the mold-wall temperature with time. This study shows the significant reduction in residual stress and birefringence is possible through the optimization of processing conditions.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.13 no.6 s.70
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• pp.509-514
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• 2004

An analysis using FEM simulation was conducted to predict residual stresses and birefringence in simple compressed cylindrical glass as a preliminary part of the optimum design determination of optical lenses. The FEM simulation with the Maxwell viscoelastic constitutive model was used to predict thermal induced residual stresses and birefringence during the compression test considering stress relaxation. Also the linear photoelastic theory was introduced to calculate birefringence from the residual stress state. The error of simulation results between experimental results in the birefringence value at the center of glass specimen is $4.2\%$, and the error in the maximum radius of deformed glass specimen is $1.2\%$. The simulation results were in good agreement with deformation and birefringence distribution in the existing experimental result.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.2355-2363
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• 2002

The accompanying paper, Part 1, has presented the physical modeling and basic numerical analysis results of both the flow-induced and thermally-induced residual stress and birefringence in injection molded center gated disks. The present paper, Part II, has attempted to investigate the effects of various processing conditions of injection/compression molding process on the residual stress and birefringence. The birefringence is significantly affected by injection melt temperature, packing pressure and packing time. Birefringence in the shell layer increases as melt temperature gets lower. The inner peak of birefringence increases with packing time and packing pressure. On the other hand, packing pressure, packing time and mold wall temperature affect the thermally-induced residual stress rather significantly in the shell layer, but insignificantly in the core region. Injection/compression molding has been found to reduce the birefringence in comparison with the conventional injection molding process. In particular, mold closing velocity and initial opening thickness in the compression stage of injection/compression molding process have significant effect on the flow-induced birefringence, but not on tile thermal residual stress and the thermally induced birefringence.

• Proceedings of the Polymer Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.361-361
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• 2006

To clarify the structure development of cyclic olefin copolymers in stretching and relaxation processes, on-line measurements of optical retardation and tensile force were performed. Birefringence increased continuously whereas stress showed yielding at stretching temperatures of $160^{\circ}C$. At $170^{\circ}C$, stress yielding was not observed and stress and birefringence increased monotonously with an increase in the strain. In the relaxation process, stress and birefringence decreased monotonously at all the temperatures examined. The slope for the stress vs. birefringence relation at initial stage of stretching increased with an increase in temperature, whereas that for the relaxation stage was significantly larger that for the stretching process, and therefore showed a significant hysteresis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.95-100
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• 2004

An analysis using FEM simulation was conducted to predict residual stresses and birefringence in simple compressed cylindrical glass as a preliminary part of the optimum design determination of optical lenses. The FEM simulation with the Maxwell viscoelastic constitutive model was used to predict thermal induced residual stresses and birefringence during the compression test considering stress relaxation. Also the linear photoelastic theory was introduced to calculate birefringence from the residual stress state. The simulation results were in good agreement with deformation and birefringence distribution in the existing experimental result.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.195-198
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• 2007

The present work focuses on the prediction of birefringence in injection-molded plastic part and its improvement by rapid mold heating. To calculate birefringence, flow-induced residual stress is computed through a fully three-dimensional injection molding analysis. Then the stress-optical law is applied from which the order of birefringence can be evaluated and visualized. The birefringence patterns are predicted for a rectangular plate with a variation of mold temperatures, which shows that the amount of molecular orientation and birefringence level decreases with an increase of mold temperature. The effect of mold temperature on the order of birefringence is also studied for a thin-walled rectangular strip, and compared with experimental measurements. Both predicted and experimental patterns of birefringence are in agreements on the observation that the birefringence level diminishes significantly when the mold temperature is raised to above the glass transition temperature.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.16 no.4 s.94
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• pp.229-233
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• 2007

The present work focuses on the prediction of birefringence in injection-molded part and its improvement by rapid mold heating. To calculate birefringence, flow-induced residual stress is computed through a fully three-dimensional injection molding analysis. Then the stress-optical law is applied from which the order of birefringence can be evaluated and visualized. The birefringence patterns are predicted for a rectangular plate with a variation of mold temperature, which shows that the amount of molecular orientation and birefringence level decreases with an increase of mold temperature. The effect of mold temperature on the order of birefringence is also studied for a thin-walled rectangular strip, and the relevant results are compared with experimental measurements. Both predicted and experimental patterns of birefringence are in agreements on the observation that the birefringence level diminishes significantly when the mold temperature is raised over the glass transition temperature.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.16 no.3 s.93
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• pp.193-200
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• 2007

Simulations of the thermally-induced residual stresses and birefringence in freely quenched plates of polycarbonate were performed by using the linear viscoelastic and photoviscoelastic constitutive equations for the mechanical and optical properties, respectively, and the first order rate equation for volume relaxation. The predictions for the birefringence showed good agreement with experimental measurements. However, for initial temperature close to the glass transition temperature, some differences existed around the surface layer. Based on the simulation, the influences of various cooling conditions on the residual stress and birefringence in plates were investigated. The residual stress and birefringence increased with increasing initial temperature, decreasing coolant temperature and increasing heat transfer coefficient of coolants.