Abstract:
Injection Compression Moulding (I/CM) is one of the many Liquid Composite Moulding (LCM) manufacturing processes for composite materials. In this study, process objective functions are defined and minimized using a global optimization technique which has been developed for this study. Different weighting values are assigned in the objective function to characterise the importance of process cycle time or clamping force requirements. The University of Auckland mould filling simulation software SimLCM has been used to simulate the I/CM process. Two different geometries are used for the optimization study, one planar and one non-planar, to demonstrate and verify the performance of the optimization algorithm. It is proven that the problem is non-convex indicating the existence of multiple local minima. The problem has been broken down into three sub-problems to locate the global minimum. Methods are presented which can be utilized by the manufacturer to decide upon the best combination of process parameters to suit specific desired outcomes.