This Co-ordination Action proposal aims at initiating a wide consortium of European experts involved in all aspects of the injection moulding process (process, material science, physical and numerical modelling and mechanical properties). Putting together this wide range of expertise will result in setting the basis for the development of a new generation of predictive tools for polymers injection moulding accounting for the most achieved physical models and numerical techniques.
Such tools should contribute in lowering the cost, improving the quality and enlarge the domain of application of injection moulded parts. It will then increase competitiveness of any of the industrial partners involved: polymer suppliers, machine and mould designers, polymer converters and end-users. Moreover, this Co-ordination Action will induce a broad dissemination in a wide range of other polymer forming processes (extrusion, film processing.).
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- To draw the state of the art on existing software packages: description of the physical laws, comparison of results on well defined partsTo specify new software packages capabilities according to the demand of the end-users (part and mould designers), and identification of blocking points (either numerical or physical) (month 36). Test of the new merging software developments and comparison with the initial ones
- To determine material data
- To identify the issues related to the use of thermoplastic software packages to other polymer systems (thermosets, rubber compound, composites.)
- To identify the issues related to process data acquisition, which are important for computation validation, and process understanding and control. A set of well defined comparison between experiments and computation will be provided
- To identify the relation between injection moulding, induced structure, and final propertiesTo identify non-standard or emerging moulding technologies and list the needed developments
- To obtain an overview of education activities dedicated to injection moulding in Europe , and to propose a solution at the European level
- To identify how technology transfer centres link SME's and research centres (circulation of information in both directions)
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PIAM Co-ordination Action will not provide new research results but will correspond to a unique area of controversy about injection moulding and related problems. This will allow to define precisely more focused research projects, directly with industrial partners (some of these industrial partners are already PIAM members, but there is no restriction towards other partners) or with the financial support of EC.
