Simulation of the Reactive Rotational Molding Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Authors: A. Hamidi, S. Khelladi, L. Illoul, A. Tcharkhtchi

Abstract:

Reactive rotational molding (RRM) is a process to manufacture hollow plastic parts with reactive material has several advantages compared to conventional roto molding of thermoplastic powders: process cycle time is shorter; raw material is less expensive because polymerization occurs during processing and high-performance polymers may be used such as thermosets, thermoplastics or blends. However, several phenomena occur during this process which makes the optimization of the process quite complex. In this study, we have used a mixture of isocyanate and polyol as a reactive system. The chemical transformation of this system to polyurethane has been studied by thermal analysis and rheology tests. Thanks to these results of the curing process and rheological measurements, the kinetic and rheokinetik of polyurethane was identified. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics, a Lagrangian meshless method, was chosen to simulate reactive fluid flow in 2 and 3D configurations of the polyurethane during the process taking into account the chemical, and chemiorehological results obtained experimentally in this study.

Keywords: Reactive rotational molding, free surface flows, simulation, smoothed particle hydrodynamics, surface tension.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1126824

References:

[1] C. Hepburn, "Polyurethane elastomers 2nd Edition," Elsevier Science Pulbishers LTD, 1992.
[2] P. Król, "Generalization of kinetics in the reaction of isocyanates and polyols for modeling a process-yielding linear polyurethane, 1," Journal of Applied Polymer Science, vol. 57, pp. 739-749, 1995.
[3] S. Boufi, M. N. Belgacem, J. Quillerou, and A. Gandini, "Urethanes and polyurethanes bearing furan moieties. 4. Synthesis, kinetics and characterization of linear polymers," acromolecules vol. 26, pp. 6706-6717, 2014/10/30 1993.
[4] S. Farzaneh, S. Riviere, and A. Tcharkhtchi, "Rheokinetic of polyurethane crosslinking time-temperature-transformation diagram for rotational molding," Journal of Applied Polymer Science, vol. 125, pp. 1559-1566.
[5] M. Sato, "The Rates of Reaction of 1-Alkenyl Isocyanates with Methanol," Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 82, pp. 3893-3897, 2014/10/30 1960.
[6] C. Pavier and A. Gandini, "Urethanes and polyurethanes from oxypropylated sugar beet pulp: I. Kinetic study in solution," European Polymer Journal, vol. 36, pp. 1653-1658, 2000.
[7] W. Dong, S. L. Jiang, X. Y. Huang, H. S. Liu, and Q. Q. Huang, "Investigation on the Non-Newtonian Fluid Flow in a Single Screw Extruder Using Incompressible SPH (ISPH)," Advanced Materials Research, vol. 482, pp. 745-748, 2012.
[8] D. Violeau, Fluid Mechanics and the SPH Method Theory and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University express, 2012.
[9] X. Xu, J. Ouyang, B. Yang, and Z. Liu, "SPH simulations of three-dimensional non-Newtonian free surface flows," Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, vol. 256, pp. 101-116, 2013.
[10] S. Riviere, Khelladi, S., Farzaneh, S., Bakir, F., Tcharkhtchi, A., "Simulation of polymer flow using smoothed particle hydrodynamics method," Polymer Engineering and Science, vol. 53, pp. 2509-2518, 2013.
[11] BarecascoA, TerissaH, NaaCF. Simple free-surface detection in two and three-dimensional SPH solver. 2013, arXiv:1309.4290
[12] Terissa H, BarecascoA, Naa F. Three-Dimensional Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Simulation for Liquid Droplet with Surface Tension.2013,arXiv:1309.3868.
[13] A. HAMIDI, Khelladi, S., iloul, S., Tcharkhtchi, A., "Implementation of surface tension in polymer flow during Reactive Rotational Molding," in 9th SPHERIC International Workshop, Paris, FRANCE, 2012, pp. 87-94.
[14] S. J. Ahn, W. Rauh, and H.-J. r. Warnecke, "Least-squares orthogonal distances fitting of the circle, sphere, ellipse, hyperbola, and parabola," Pattern Recognition, vol. 34, pp. 2283-2303, 2001.