Assessment of Energy Consumption in Injection Moulding Process

Injection moulding may appear to be a benign process regarding energy consumption. However, the large scale of this process makes its impacts especially critic and minor efficiency improvements may lead to high overall energy savings. Moreover, energy consumption affects not only the product manufacturing costs, but is also a critical component in any overall sustainability strategy. This paper presents a model that estimates in an early phase of the design of a plastic part the energy consumption during its manufacturing. This enables estimating the energy consumption for different part geometries and different machines and process conditions prior to the production phase. Moreover, this paper contributes in integrating thermodynamic fundamentals and empirical relations fostered by literature review and an experimental analysis developed in an injection moulding company. In the end the thermodynamic/empirical model is validated by comparing its results for several parts with the measured real energy consumption.

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