Journal
CHINESE JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Volume 24, Issue 1, Pages 180-189Publisher
CHEMICAL INDUSTRY PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cjche.2015.11.016
Keywords
Microcellular injection molding; Isotactic polypropylene/nano-calcium carbonate; Cell morphology; Nucleation activation energy; Numerical simulation
Categories
Funding
- National High Technology Research and Development Program of China [2012AA040211]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [21306043]
- Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China [20120074120019, 20130074110013]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Microcellular injection molding of neat isotactic polypropylene (iPP) and isotactic polypropylene/nano-calcium carbonate composites (iPP/nano-CaCO3) was performed using supercritical carbon dioxide as the physical blowing agent. The influences of filler content and operating conditions on microstructure morphology of iPP and iPP/nano-CaCO3 microcellular samples were studied systematically. The results showed the bubble size of the microcellular samples could be effectively decreased while the cell density increased for iPP/nano-CaCO3 composites, especially at high CO2 concentration and back pressure, low mold temperature and injection speed, and high filler content. Then Moldex 3D was applied to simulate the microcellular injection molding process, with the application of the measured ScCO2 solubility and diffusion data for iPP and iPP/nano-CaCO3 composites respectively. For neat iPP, the simulated bubble size and density distribution in the center section of tensile bars showed a good agreement with the experimental values. However, for iPP/nano(-)CaCO3 composites, the correction factor for nucleation activation energy F and the pre-exponential factor of nucleation rate f(0) were obtained by nonlinear regression on the experimental bubble size and density distribution. The parameters F and f(0) can be used to predict the microcellular injection molding process for iPP/nano-CaCO3 composites by Moldex 3D. (C) 2015 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available