NUMERICAL STUDY FOR THE ANALYSIS OF DEFECTS IN METAL INJECTION

Metal injection molding (MIM) is a complex manufacturing process which is used for producing complex-shaped parts of various materials. The MIM is a combination of four sequential technological processes which has an effect on the quality of the final parts. If the molding step is made with a poor mould design or unsuitable chosen injection parameters, it will results defects. These defects can be rectified by optimizing process parameters and mold design with trial and error technique. The main purpose of this paper is to present the results of the numerical simulation of mold filling by casting the liquid metal (aluminum) in a metal mold. The influence of some processing parameters such as cooling time, injection temperature, injection pressure and flow rate on the defects generated after cooling the liquid metal have been investigated. The finite element method (FEM) is used in the numerical simulation to solve the set of governing equations using Ansys software. The volume of fluid (VOF) approach is used for tracking moving free surfaces during the cooling process