Over the years, different tools have been developed to evaluate the accuracy of our MOLDFLOW material cards. Typically, pressure transducers are implemented in specific molds to validate the MOLDFLOW pressure predictions. We also have tools to measure the material shrinkage which is then compared with numerical results. On top of that, specific protocols have been defined to look correlate the MOLDFLOW volumetric shrinkage predictions with the risk of getting voids/sink marks in the final parts.
The main tools currently used for our verification/validation purposes are here illustrated:
The following document (link to be added once ready) also provides more insights about our verification protocols and the different outputs we can expect from our verification studies.
Typically:
- The Brussels MOLD I is considered for systematic verification of the pressure and shrinkage prediction for every new MOLDFLOW characterization;
- The Alpharetta e-cover is used for rapid assessment of the need to review the characterization of old material cards as well as generating data for smart devices oriented grades;
- The Brussels "LFT demonstrator" part can be considered for structural applications as well as calibrating a "volumetric shrinkage threshold" for the risk of getting voids;
- The Alpharetta hip retractor tool is also a nice instrument to study the link between volumetric shrinkage and the risk of getting voids; this tool being clearly oriented to the Healthcare Market.
This library of internal tools is constantly evolving with the construction of different internal molds for specific applications/markets (injection molded slot liners ...) which helps us building a solid database of verification and validation cases. All recent MOLDFLOW validation cases are consolidated in the following file. (LINK TO BE CONFIRMED)