A New Approach for the Validation of Filling Simulations in Micro Injection Moulding

In manufacturing polymer micro products, numerical simulations are used with the same purposes as in conventional injection moulding, mainly the optimization of micro components design, the optimization of process parameters and the decrease of production costs. Dedicated simulations softwares fail to correctly describe the melt flow in microstructures, mainly because phenomena such as tendency of polymers to slip in micro-channels, micro scale surface effects, and micro scale rheological behaviour are not considered. Therefore, accuracy of computer aided engineering simulations still needs to be improved. The main objective of this work is to evaluate whether the present numerical codes are suitable to characterize melt flow patterns in a micro cavity. In order to test the accuracy of the software, real and simulated experiments were performed and used to investigate the filling of a micro moulded component.