Sukrut Prashant Phansalkar and Bongtae Han
Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
For more information about this article and related research, please contact Prof. Bongtae Han.
Abstract:
Unlike the transfer molding process, the mold temperature, pressure and time as well as the post-mold curing temperature and time can be process-parameters for the compression molding process simply because the transfer of an epoxy-based molding compound (EMC) through tiny channels does not have to occur. Accurate prediction capability is demanded to identify an optimum process condition. The EMC cures and deforms simultaneously during the compression molding process. Therefore, in addition to the properties employed in the routine modeling practice, the prediction requires several non-conventional properties such as a complete set of cure kinetics model constants and the cure-extent dependent viscoelastic properties. Measuring the non-conventional properties is challenging but it is equally challenging to incorporate the properties in numerical implementation. This paper proposes a numerical modeling scheme, based on various analogies and field variables, to simulate the complete compression molding process using the cure-dependent properties.
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