Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Liquid-Forming

Abstract

The packaging of liquid products is conventionally realized by using two production stages, which are the stretch blow molding and the filling. In the stretch blow molding process, hot polyethylene terephthalate (PET) preforms are inflated by pressurized air into a cavity to form plastic bottles. In a follow-up process, these packages are filled by a separate machine with the desired liquid product. In contrast to that, liquid-forming combines the blowing and filling stages by directly using the liquid product to form a plastic bottle. Through this substitution, two main challenges arise. Firstly, there are significant inertia effects through the liquid mass, leading to additional reaction forces and a spatially inhomogeneous pressure distribution inside the preform. Secondly, the heat transfer between preform and fluid is drastically increased. Because of this cooling effect, a specific combination of forming speed as well as initial preform and liquid temperatures is necessary to avoid thermally induced preform rupture. This is based on the fact that the formability of PET rapidly declines below its glass transition temperature (Tg). Consequently, a process control requires the knowledge of how the process parameters influence the preform cooling. In this paper, a numerical simulation of the liquid-forming process (LF) is introduced including the preform cooling during forming. In addition, the strain-dependent self-heating effect of PET is implemented. Process experiments under different parameter combinations are conducted using simplified bottle geometry. Through a comparison of the results from experiments and from simulation, the influence of process parameters on the temperature drop and thus on thermally induced failure is determined. In this way, process understanding and control are increased.