Experimental and Numerical study on Uniformity of Wall Thickness of Transparent Acrylic in Bubble Inflation and Plug Assistance Thermoforming Processes

Wall Thickness of Transparent Acrylic in manufacturing a hemispherical workpiece is investigated in this paper. First of all bubble inflation thermofoming process is completely modeled in Abaqus and the results are verified by those of obtained from experiments. Afterward this FEM model is used to simulate a thermoforming process which a plug is included in bubble inflation method and a fraction of final height of product is formed by air pressure and the remain is completed by a plug. The variation of wall thickness versus angle shows that using a plug in bubble inflation method, excels the uniformity of wall thickness of product.

کلیدواژه ها:

Thermoforming ، Acrylic ، Bubble Inflation ، Plug Assistance Method ، FEM ، Hyperelastic ، Wall Thickness