U.S.-Japan Cooperative Research: Fundamental Heat Transfer Studies in Polymer Processing and Manufacturing

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This award will support a two-year U.S.-Japan cooperative research project between Professor Raymond Viskanta, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, and Professor Yasuo Kurosaki, Director of the Heat Transfer Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering for Production, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Professor Satish Ramadhyani of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue will also be involved in the project. The goal of the project is to develop basic understanding of both polymer flow in molds and the mechanisms of residual stress generation within molded polymers during injection molding processes required for production of precise molded polymer components. This is to be achieved by use of in situ, noninvasive experimental techniques to obtain test data, modeling of the processes, and development of computational techniques for simulating real systems. The theoretical models will be developed at Purdue to simulate processing of polymers during injection molding. Predictions of these models will be compared with experiments carried out on the apparatus at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The U.S. and Japanese researchers will work together to validate the mathematical models developed at Purdue using experimental data obtained in Tokyo employing non-intrusive optical (birefringence) techniques for making temperature and flow measurements during the cooling stage of a polymer being molded. This is a unique method that has the potential of determining the frozen layer thickness, melt front position, shear stress, and temperature fields without interfering with the process.