In the two-stage stretch blow molding process for the manufacture of PET bottles, injection molded preforms are placed in an infrared oven, with axially profiled heating lamps. The subsequent inflation of the PET preform is strongly dependent on the preform geometry and the temperature profile, as hot zones will blow out faster and thin out more than colder and stiffer zones. In this work, the reheat and blowing stages of the process are both modeled and experimentally validated. The part considered is a water bottle produced at the Husky Bottle Development Center. The simulations were performed at the Industrial Materials Institute. Four oven operating settings are studied. The heat transfer in the oven is modeled by combining radiation and air convection. The preform stretching and inflation are modeled with a non-isothermal hyperelastic constitutive equation. Simulations are performed using experimentally measured temperature profiles as input.
展开▼
