Advanced structural foam molding using a continuous polymer/gas melt flow stream
✍ Scribed by Xiang Xu; Chul B. Park; John W. S. Lee; Xindong Zhu
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2008
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 332 KB
- Volume
- 109
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0021-8995
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✦ Synopsis
Abstract
This article introduces a patented advanced structural foam molding technology. By the implementation of a means of continuing the polymer matrix melt flow stream, the processing conditions are made consistent, and the injected gas is thus uniformly dispersed throughout the polymer matrix. Compared with its predecessors targeted at similar applications, this new technology generates single‐phase polymer/blowing agent solutions and is therefore capable of producing parts with smaller cell sizes, more uniform cell size distributions, higher void fractions, and similar geometric accuracy. Fine‐celled parts (>10^6^ cells/cm^3^) with high void fractions (>30%) were successfully produced in this research with an advanced structural foam molding machine that was built in house. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008