• 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.

• 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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.2342-2354
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• 2002

The present study has numerically predicted both the flow -induced and thermally-induced residual stresses and birefringence in injection o. injection/compression molded center -gated disks. Analysis system for entire molding process was developed based on an ap propriate physical modeling including a nonlinear viscoelastic fluid model, stress-optical law, a linear viscoelastic solid model, free volume theory for density relaxation phenomena and a photoviscoelasticity and so on. Part I presents physical modeling a nd typical numerical analysis results of residual stresses and birefringence in the injection molded center-gated disk. Thermal residual stress was found to be extensional near the center, compressive near the surface and tend to become toward tensional at the surface. A double-hump profile was obtained across the thickness in birefringence distribution: nonzero birefringence is found to be thermally induced, the outer peak is due to the shear flow and subsequent stress relaxation during the filling stage a nd the inner peak is due to the additional shear flow and stress relaxation during the packing stage. Predicted birefringence including both the flow -induced and thermally-induced one becomes quite similar to the experimental one.

• 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.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.258-261
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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. 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.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.730-737
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• 2003

Extensive studies have been conducted for reducing the residual stresses and birefringence in injection-molded optical disk substrate Flow-induced and thermally-induced stresses and birefringence have been found as two main sources during injection molding process. However, high speed rotation also induces extra stresses and birefringence in real operation of disk drives. In the present paper rotation-induced in-plane birefringence has been measured and presented for CD and DVD substrates at different radial position. About 10 - 15 nm of extra retardation in one pass has been measured up to 4,800 rpm. The distribution of extra rotation-induced birefringence will be valuable data for designing an optimal optical disk substrate. Finally, experimental results were compared with the extra stresses calculated from simple formulation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.470-473
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• 2003

Extensive studies have been conducted for reducing the residual stresses and birefringence in injection-molded optical disk substrate. Flow-induced and thermally-induced stresses and birefringence have been found as two main sources during injection molding process. However, high speed rotation also induces extra stresses and birefringence in real operation of disk drives. In the present paper rotation-induced in-plane birefringence has been measured and presented for CD and DVD substrates at different radial position. About 10 - 15 nm of extra retardation has been measured up to 4,800 rpm.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2005.09a
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• pp.17-22
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• 2005

The residual birefringence in molded plastic parts can be divided into two kinds of residual birefringence, i.e., the flow induced residual birefringence produced in flowing stages and the thermally induced residual birefringence produced in cooling stage. In this paper, the effect of new injection-press molding process with normal injection mold, i.e. I) injection-compression mode, ii) injection-press mode, on the distribution of birefringence was studied. It was found that the values of the birefringence was reduced at i) low clamping force and ii) longer mold opening length by injection-press molding.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.90-94
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• 2012

Recently, injection molding process became more popular than ever to produce large quantities of high precision products. Extensive studies have been conducted for reducing the residual stresses and birefringence in injection-molded optical products. Flow-induced and thermally-induced stresses and birefringence have been found as two main sources during injection molding process. Generally, quantitative value of birefringence can be measured with polarizing microscope using the compensator. However, it is difficult to measure low order retardation with microscope, so developing a measurement system for low order optical path difference is in need. In the present paper, a system using Photo Elastic Modulator (PEM) is demonstrated to measure low phase retardation in injection-molded products.