Читать книгу Plastics Process Analysis, Instrumentation, and Control - Группа авторов - Страница 36

In the early 1970s, the idea of injecting fluid into polymer melts in the mold was proposed to produce hollow parts, and later the water-assisted injection molding (WAIM) technology was developed (49, 50).

Due to the development and wide applications of GAIM (42–44, 51), WAIM had been set aside in the last century.

Recently, this promising polymer processing technology has attracted attention not only for academic reasons but also for its industrial applications (52). The WAIM technology provides a new way to fabricate hollow or other complicated products due to its faster cycling time and light weight.

An overview has been given of the basic principles and applications of WAIM as well as the current research status (52). Here, first, the origin and the development of WAIM technology are described and then their advantages and applications are given. The review also focuses on the experimental trends of WAIM such as computer simulation, the effect of processing parameters on the WAIM samples, and the morphology as well as related WAIM-molded composites and polymer blends’ work (52).