Patent ID: 8364453

Claim:
A method for optimizing injection molding by calculating orientation statistics of non-spherical particles on a macroscopic level for simulating an injection molding process with a suspension that is formed by a solvent containing a large number of non-spherical particles comprising the steps: specifying a mold cavity, which forms at least part of a simulation domain; providing a digital representation of the simulation domain; forming a mesh with a plurality of computational cells by subdividing or discretizing at least part of the digital representation of the simulation domain; specifying boundary conditions for the simulation; setting initial conditions for the simulation; solving the balance equations for mass, momentum and energy for at least a portion of the cells of the simulation domain to obtain fluid flow, heat flow and mass transfer of cells of the solution domain at a macroscopic level; solving nonspherical particle orientation equations based at least partly on the results of the solved balance equations to thereby determine changes in the nonspherical particle orientation at a macroscopic level as function of space and time, wherein the non-spherical particle orientation is described statistically by a distribution function; wherein the distribution function is approximated by non-spherical particle orientation tensors of increasing order including a 2 nd order orientation tensor and a 4 th order orientation tensor and the 4th order orientation tensor is computed as a function of the 2nd order orientation tensor using a stabilized hybrid closure approximation; and simulating the formation of one or more injection molded parts with solvent and a plurality of nonspherical particles based on the simulation model.