An Optimization Scheme for Part Quality in Injection Molding

Abstract

In this paper, a mathematical definition of part warpage is presented by strain tensors and part quality is quantified via numerical simulation. An objective function of part quality is proposed that must be optimized. The resulting optimum is obtained by iterative search in the constrained space based on an numerical optimization algorithm — Simulated Annealing method, which is a global and robust method. The efficiency of the simulated Annealing method is in between calculus-based methods, such as DFP, BFGS, MFD and common search schemes, such as, simplex and exhaust search method, etc. (Goffe, 1994). The results are shown by a number of numerical examples where the part warpage is significantly reduced after optimization.