Gate shape optimization using design of experiment to reduce the shear rate around the gate

Numerical analysis is used to optimize the gate shape of the mold part in the molding process. The objective of this research was to develop a procedure that will optimize the gate shape of the mold part by using Design of Experiments approach. The computer-aided engineering software Moldflow was used to simulate the plastic injection molding process and the Minitab software was used to analyze the computational results from Moldflow. The Bulk Molding Compounds (BMC) UNI-203S thermoset material was chosen as the molding material. Four different types of gate shapes were analyzed to find the gate shape to be used in the optimization. The Type 3 gate shape was selected as basis for the gate optimization because this shape yielded the minimum shear rate around the gate among all. The thickness, width, length and angle of the gate were selected as the design variables. Erosion around a gate due to repetitive shear flow during molding process was considered as an important issue to extend the service life of the expensive mold. It is normally very difficult to prevent erosion due to high injection pressure and repetitive use of the mold, especially in certain molding parts as BMC reflector in automotive parts, so it has become the subject of researches. The effectiveness of design variables was evaluated by observing shear rate around the gate. The objective of the optimization was to minimize the average shear rate around the gate. Response Surface Method was applied to identify the optimum values of the design variables. The computed optimum values were validated numerically. The optimized gate shape showed the reduced shear rate by about 11%.