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Procedia Engineering 177 (2017) 127 – 134

XXI International Polish-Slovak Conference “Machine Modeling and Simulations 2016”

Design of flash pocket inserts in an extrusion blow mould based on

the results of numerical simulations
Dariusz Kwiatkowski, Michał Modławski, Tomasz Jaruga*
Department of Polymer Processing, Częstochowa University of Technology, Al. Armii Krajowej 19C, 42-201 Częstochowa, Poland

Abstract

The results of heat flow simulation in a flash pocket of an extrusion blow mould, made using ANSYS Polyflow
software, are presented in this article. The efficiency of plastic cooling speed depending on the flash pocket profile
shape was evaluated on the basis of polymer and mould temperature values.
The simulation was made using the model of a real blow mould with sockets to place the inserts of a different
flash pocket profile shape. The simulation of the temperature change near flash pocket zone surface was made. The
inserts allow testing the efficiency of polymer cooling in the flash pocket depending on the profile shape in this
mould zone. As the result, the prediction of the extrusion blow moulding cycle time can be made. It was found that
the most effective cooling of the plastic in the flash pocket can be achieved using the semicircular profile.
© 2017
© 2017TheTheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier Ltd. is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Ltd. This
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of MMS 2016.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of MMS 2016
Keywords: extrusion blow moulding simulation; blow mould; pinch-off zone; flash pocket;

1. Introduction

Extrusion blow moulding process is widely used in manufacturing of the hollow plastic parts. Its main
applications are: packaging industry (bottles), automotive (fuel tanks), toys. Since this process is used for high
volume or mass production its efficiency should be high. This can be achieved by shortening the cycle time.
Multicavity moulds or multi-section machines are used to produce more parts in one cycle but also the efficiency of
the mould is very important. One of the factors influencing the production time per part is the efficiency of cooling
system in the mould. Most of the materials used in this process are thermoplastics and some time is needed to cool

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +48-34-3250-659; fax: +48-34-3250-659.

E-mail address: jaruga@ipp.pcz.pl

1877-7058 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of MMS 2016
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2017.02.200
128 Dariusz Kwiatkowski et al. / Procedia Engineering 177 (2017) 127 – 134

down the molten material, flowing out of the extrusion head and then blown inside a mould, until it will solidificate
on the mould wall and will be ready to be removed from the mould and to be transported further. The mould cooling
should be very intensive, particularly in the flash pocket, where the hot parison is folded and this excessive amount
of the material is named a flash. The polymer layer thickness is doubled in this mould zone. The heat transfer from
the mould surface to the cooling channels can be significantly increased by the design of the riffled surface in the
flash pocket zone. However, different shapes of the profile in this mould zone are used and, except of different
machinability, this shape is expected to have a different efficiency of the heat transfer.

1.1. Extrusion blow mould

The products in an extrusion blow moulding process are formed in two steps: first, a hot parison is extruded in
the vertical direction on the extruder with the use of an extrusion die. The parison is of the proper diameter and its
wall thickness which can vary along its length. Then the parison is blown by the pressurized air inside a blow
mould. A classical extrusion blow mould is shown in Fig. 1. Usually these moulds consist of many parts made from
different materials. The parts being in contact with the flash should be of high heat transfer coefficient.

Fig. 1. Scheme of an extrusion blow mould [1, 2].

1.2. Pinch-off zone design

The part of the mould which enables the mould to cut off the excessive material from the manufactured product is
called pinch-off zone. It consists of several areas, which are: pinching edge, pressure zone and flash pocket (Fig. 2a.
The role of the pinching edge is to split the flash from the part. The polymer outside the cavity is compressed in
the pressure zone and fills the riffled area called flash pocket where is cooled intensively.
The shape and dimensions of flash pocket area is important for the efficient cooling but also for the proper work
of the mould. some rules should be followed in the design of the geometrical features. The recommendations for a
flash pocket profile design are given in Fig. 2b. The design of the pinch-off zone should be optimized for the
particular product and it influences for example the quality of the bond in the bottom of the container [1-5]. The
quality of the product can be influenced not only by the mould design by also by the processing conditions [6].
Extrusion blow moulding process can be modeled using finite element method-based software. Although the
simulation is not so widely used as in case of injection moulding process, it is possible to predict the final wall
thickness of the product after blowing phase [7, 8] and to optimize the parison dimensions to obtain the wall
thickness values as uniform as only possible across the part [9].
 Dariusz Kwiatkowski et al. / Procedia Engineering 177 (2017) 127 – 134 129

Fig. 2. Pinch-off zone in an extrusion blow mould: a) different areas [1], b) recommendations for flash pocket design - triangular profile [4].

2. Experimental

The aim of this article is to evaluate the polymer cooling efficiency in the extrusion blow mould for different
flash pocket surface shapes. A numerical simulation was used to investigate the temperature profiles in the mould
cross-section. ANSYS Polyflow software, ver. 16.1, was used for this purpose.

2.1. The mould

The aluminum mould used in the experiment is shown in Fig. 4. It consists of two parts (halves) shown in Fig. 3a.
This mould is used for manufacturing the axi-symmetrical bottle. The blowing pin is located below the mould and
the mould during its work on the machine is oriented as shown in Fig. 3a. The mould pinch-off zone is redesigned
in order to make the investigation of parison cooling efficiency with the use of different shapes of the flash pocket
surface. The change of these shapes will be possible by using interchangeable inserts. One of these inserts is
indicated in Fig. 3c, but more design details of this insert are given in Fig. 4. The thermocouples will be used to
measure the mould temperature in the distance of 4 mm from the mould parting surface in order to evaluate heat
transfer effectiveness. Moreover, it is possible to change the distance between the inserts in order to do the
investigation for the parison of different wall thickness.

Fig. 3. The experimental extrusion blow mould (a) a view of the mould; (b) the mould with a milled pocket; (c) the mould with an pinch-off
insert.
130 Dariusz Kwiatkowski et al. / Procedia Engineering 177 (2017) 127 – 134

Fig. 4. The flash pocket insert - the example with the triangular profile.

Four shapes of flash pocket profile were designed (Fig. 5): flat (A), which is not effective but easy to
manufacture, triangular (B), trapezoidal (C) and semicircular (D).

Fig. 5. The flash pocket profiles used in the simulation: A - flat, B - triangular, C - trapezoidal, D - semicircular.

2.2. Mesh model

The problem of temperature distribution across the mould cross-section in the flash pocket zone was analysed.
Since the analyses were made in the cross-section, finite element method of calculation was used and two-
dimensional problem was analyzed. The analyzed cross-section is indicated in Fig. 4a and marked as "Division
plane".
The parison, which is placed between the mould halves before blowing, was modeled is the flash pocket zone not
as a tube - circular cross-section - Fig. 6a, because of the problems with defining the contact between two free
surfaces (in this case: polymer to polymer) in the software. An assumption was made that the process of cooling
starts in the moment when the parison is folded and there is no air closed inside. The shape of the polymer (folded
parison) which was taken into account in the simulation is shown in Fig. 6b.
 Dariusz Kwiatkowski et al. / Procedia Engineering 177 (2017) 127 – 134 131

Fig. 6. The shape of the polymeric parison in the flash pocket zone: a) the real model - before mould clamping, b) the model considered in the
simulation.

2.3. Material data

The polymer considered in the simulation was high-density polyethylene (PE-HD) Tipelin 6000B. This is a
common material used for manufacturing extrusion blow moulded parts, especially in packaging industry.

The following material data were considered in the simulation:

Polymer material data:

x the average viscosity: 56.4 x 103 Pa·s - in the shear rate range from 0.005 to 0.5 1/s,
x since the time of mould clamping is very short, the influence of the temperature on shear rate was not taken
into account,
x density: 767 kg/m3 (in the temperature of 170°C ),
x thermal conductivity: 0.3 W/(m·K),
x heat capacity per mass unit: 1800 J/(kg·K),
x thermal expansion coefficient (volumetric): 602.08 ·10-6 1/K.
Metal material data:

x density: 7860 kg/m3,

x thermal conductivity: 58 W/(m·K),
x heat capacity per mass unit 450 J/(kg·K).

2.4. Processing conditions

The processing conditions are listed in Table 1. The temperature values of polymer and mould are typical for this
process. They change during the consecutive cycles. In this investigation one cycle was considered an the equal
temperature across the mould was assumed.

Table 1. Processing parameters used in the simulation.

Parameter Value Unit
Initial mould temperature 23 °C
Initial parison temperature 170 °C
Initial distance between mould halves 20 mm
Mould clamping speed 0.1 m/s

After the mould was closed there was a small distance between the mould halves in the mould parting surface
area, just outside the flash pocket, which depends on the parison wall thickness. Assuming the constant mould
clamping speed the "x" distance influenced mould clamping time - see Table 2.
132 Dariusz Kwiatkowski et al. / Procedia Engineering 177 (2017) 127 – 134

Table 2. The parameters dependent of the parison wall thickness.

Parison wall thickness, mm Distance between inserts x, mm Mould clamping time, s
1.5 0.5 0.103
1.9 1.3 0.099
2.3 2.1 0.095
2.6 2.7 0.092

3. Results and discussion

The temperature distribution of the parison and mould material in the vertical cross-section of the flash pocket
zone is presented in Fig. 7 for one parison wall thickness: 1.9 mm. There are two different scales of the temperature:
of the polymer (parison) - on the left, and of the mould (right). This result is presented for the moment of 10 s after
the mould started to close. Higher temperature values of the mould and lower values of the polymer on the mould
wall are recorded for the semicircular shape. This means that this shape is the most efficient in the heat transfer and
the flash cooling using this design should be the fastest. However, as it was shown in Fig. 8, the rib shape influences
the simulation results. In the case of the semicircular profile shape the polymer approaches the surface of the area
between ribs and the gap is so small that the defined contact condition is fullfilled. This does not occurs in the case
of the triangular ribs - the gap size exceeds the contact condition distance and therefore the contact area between the
polymer and the mould is in fact deteriorated. The triangular shape of the ribs can be also problematic in the real
production because of the difficulties of filling the corners.

Fig. 7. Temperature distribution of the folded parison and the mould after 10 s after mould clamping obtained from the simulation.
 Dariusz Kwiatkowski et al. / Procedia Engineering 177 (2017) 127 – 134 133

Fig. 8. The mesh of compressed parison and the mould after 10 s in semicircular and triangular profile flash pocket.

The temperature of the parison outer surface as a function of time is presented in Fig. 9. These results confirm the
temperature distribution results presented in Fig. 7 - the lowest temperature of the polymer was obtained in the case
of semicircular shape (D). The difference in the temperature between the four profile optoins increases with the
parison wall thickness. In the case of the biggest thickness (2.6 mm) the lowest cooling effectiveness is observed for
the triangular shape (B) and this can be caused by the problems with filling the grooves of this shape.

Fig. 9. Temperature drop of the polymer outer surface.

134 Dariusz Kwiatkowski et al. / Procedia Engineering 177 (2017) 127 – 134

While the temperature of the polymer decreases with the time, the mould temperature increases because of the
heat transfer from the polymer to the mould. The temperature of the parison (average value in the entire cross-
section) mould after 10 s is shown in Fig. 10. On the base of these results similar conclusions to these coming from
Fig. 9 can be withdrawn - the best heat exchange between the polymer and the mould is observed in the case of
semicircular flash pocket profile shape. The higher heat transfer effectiveness can be observed for the small parison
wall thickness (1.5 mm) in all cases of the profiles.

Fig. 10. Temperature after 10 s of cooling: a) average temperature of the polymer cross-section, b) mould temperature in the thermocouples'
position.

4. Conclusions

The cooling rate of polymer in the flash pocket of an extrusion blow mould depends on the shape, especially on
the profile of this part of the mould. It is recommended to use the semicircular profile since it allows obtaining fast
cooling compared to the other tested shapes: trapezoidal, triangular and flat. Moreover, the efficiency of the
semicircular shape does not change with the parison wall thickness, when the distance between two mould halves in
the flash pocket area is increased. The triangular shape effectiveness changes with the parison wall thickness and
this depends on the grooves filling.

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