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With years of experience in applying CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) tools in different automotive plastics component design analyses, authors try to define the accuracy of CAE simulations through three carefully selected case studies: natural frequency prediction, vibration stress calculation, and fatigue analysis. The first case study demonstrates that CAE is able to achieve great accuracy in predicting structural global properties such as natural frequency. The second case shows that CAE results do not correlate so well for the predictions of local properties such as vibration induced stress or strain response, while the third one indicates that CAE predictions on A to B comparison is always accurate even in the case of fatigue life prediction, that is known as a difficult task. Therefore, the CAE global property predictions should weigh heavier in plastic component design evaluation than on the local ones.

Plastics injection molds are typically subjected to a combination of loadings such as injection pressure, temperature changes, clamping force, and potential interference at seal-off surfaces during manufacturing process. The loadings on the molds are as cyclic as the injection molding cycles. As a result, the molds could fail either in material overstraining or fatigue. In this paper, several failure cases will be presented, along with the FEA stress and fatigue analysis results, to demonstrate the effect of the above mentioned loadings on the mold structural integrity. This paper will also show how the FEA stress and fatigue analyses were effectively employed to determine the mold failure root cause and assist the design modification in a usually constrained time frame.

Plastics manufacturing technology is rapidly changing. The use of process simulation to increase competitiveness has proliferated. Visteon Automotive Systems is committed to developing competent workforce and niche capabilities in plastics processing simulation. In this paper the current capabilities and future development plan for plastic process simulation are discussed. An integrated concurrent engineering process has been developed and implemented to deliver high quality robust plastics automotive products and systems. This paper highlights the technological advancements achieved by Visteon in the field of analytical simulation of common manufacturing processes. In addition, future development initiatives towards the technical competency in plastics manufacturing simulation are discussed throughout the manuscript.