Premium
A low‐dimensional description of transient shear‐thinning free‐surface flow in thin cavities, as applied to injection molding
Author(s) -
Zhang Sheng X.,
Khayat Roger E.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
international journal for numerical methods in fluids
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.938
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1097-0363
pISSN - 0271-2091
DOI - 10.1002/fld.630
Subject(s) - mechanics , free surface , flow (mathematics) , laplace transform , materials science , mathematics , geometry , mathematical analysis , physics
A spectral methodology is proposed to examine the influence of shear thinning on the transient free‐surface flow inside a three‐dimensional thin cavity. The problem is closely related to the filling stage during the injection molding process. The moving domain is mapped onto a rectangular domain at each time step of the computation. A modified pressure is introduced that is governed by the Laplace's equation. The flow field is expanded in Fourier series along the lateral direction in the mapped domain, and the Galerkin projection is used to derive the equations that govern the expansion coefficients, which are solved using a variable‐step finite‐difference scheme. This approach is valid for simple and complex cavities as illustrated for the cases of a flat plate with variable and constant thickness. It is shown that, even for highly non‐linear shear‐thinning flow, only a few modes are needed for convergence. Shear thinning generally influences the flow behaviour. However, shear thinning may enhance or prohibit the flow, depending whether the flow rate at the entrance of the cavity is fast or slow, respectively. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.