Microcellular injection moulding is an important injection moulding technique to create foaming plastic parts. However, there are no consistent conclusions on the impact of processing parameters on the cell morphology of microcellular injection moulded parts. This paper investigates the influence of the main processing parameters, such as melt temperature, mould temperature, injection pressure, flow rate, shot volume and gas dosage amount, on the average cell size and weight reduction of a talc-reinforced polypropylene square part (165 mm × 165 mm × 3.2 mm), using the commercial software Moldex 3D. The effect of each parameter is investigated considering a range of values and the simulation results were compared with published experimental results. The differences between numerical and experimental trends are discussed.
Keywords: Moldex 3D; MuCell®; cell morphology; process parameters; simulation; weight reduction.