Abstract: Precision and energy-saving is the trend of injection molding industry. Because of the high energy consumption of conventional full hydraulic injection molding machine(IMM)during the molding-moving phase, a novel internal circulation two-platen IMM is proposed. The key component, internal circulation mold clamping cylinder, acts as the role of energy saving and mold moving resistance during the mold moving stage. To better understand the energy consumption principle of the internal circulation two-platen clamping unit during mold moving, the three dimensional numerical model and boundary condition is built in this study. The model equations are solved by the finite volume method and dynamic mesh by selecting pressure based solver of FLUENT. The pressure field and velocity field in the cylinder are obtained. The experiment results show that the resistance caused by the internal circulation cylinders during is small and the internal circulation two-platen clamping unit makes the machine rank the highest in terms of the energy-saving.

Key words: Clamping unit, Dynamic mesh, Injection molding machine, Internal circulation cylinder, Numerical simulation