Simulation of reacting flow during filling in reaction injection molding (RIM)

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Abstract
This paper deals with computer simulation of the filling stage of the Reaction Injection Molding (RIM) process for cavities of rectangular, cylindrical, and disc shapes. The computer model is in two parts: the main flow and the flow by the moving front. In the main flow part, the transient equations of axial momentum, energy and species conservation and also the continuity equation are solved numerically by finite‐difference methods using a moving, changing mesh. In the flow front part, which is quite novel, the transient (parabolic) vorticity, energy and species conservation equations and the elliptic streamfunction equation are again solved by finite‐difference methods. An important feature of both parts is that convection along and across the flow is included in all the transient equations. Results are presented for all three cavity shapes and those for rectangular cavities are compared with the experimental results of previous investigators.