Polymer Engineering and Science, Vol.55, No.4, 933-944, 2015
Experimental Investigation and Numerical Simulation of Liquid Supported Stretch Blow Molding
An innovative production process for PET bottles ad containers is analyzed in this article. Liquid Bi-Orientation (LBO) is a liquid supported stretch blow molding (SBM), which combines the separate blowing and filling phases of conventional SBM. The process modification is mainly characterized by forming the bottle using the desired liquid product instead of pressurized air. Consequently, possible improvements evolve regarding production cycle time, energy consumption and machine footprint. To make use of these capabilities, comprehensive process understanding is required, which can be increased using numerical simulation methods. Therefore, in this article, an LBO process model is set-up and experimentally evaluated. The model explicitly considers the fluid-structure interaction between liquid and PET, which significantly influences the PET forming behavior. The key simulation parameters namely the strong rate and temperature dependency of PET and a realistic process parameter determination are also included. The model is evaluated using two different methods to show the reliability of the process prediction. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:933-944, 2015. (c) 2014 Society of Plastics Engineers