An integrated simulation method for analyzing mechanical properties of injection molded fiber‐reinforced polymers

Abstract Injection molded fiber‐reinforced polymers have been widely used for their excellent comprehensive properties. Due to the high cost of injection molds, how to improve the strength of the products in the design stage is a problem worthy of researching. This study presents a novel method for predicting the product strength via analysis of weld line and fiber orientation, which are two key factors in injection molding. In this study, injection molding simulation was carried out in commercial software Moldex3D to obtain the information about weld line, fiber orientation and other factors which were used for prediction of strength of products. Based on the healing theory and interdiffusion model, a weld line strength model for injection molding is established. The effects of fiber orientation distribution on strength were investigated through Abaqus structural analysis. The proposed method was used to verify the experimental results in the existing literatures and the simulation results were in good agreement with the experiments. The method was applied in the gate design of an aerospace product. This study indicated that the proposed method has great potential for mold design, product structure design and process optimization.