Plastic parts working for you

Smithers Rapra simulation services allow engineers to prove designs at an early stage, ensuring that
their product will be right first time.
For cost effective plastic product development, finite element stress analysis and flow modelling of
plastic components is part and parcel of the design process. However, assumptions and
misunderstandings about the nature of plastics often cause unnecessary and costly failure of plastic
parts.
Fortunately Smithers Rapra has a wealth of knowledge and experience in the right ways to go about
designing with plastics.
Factors that should be addressed when designing for plastics include:
Long-term behavior – thermoplastic mechanical properties are both time and temperature
dependent. Long term creep and fatigue data generation is essential for accurate product life
predictions.
Environmental effects - exposure to chemical environments and elevated temperature can reduce
long term performance.
Processing effects - injection moulding of components introduces many features that are often
overlooked e.g. mechanical anisotropy due to alignment of fibre reinforcement and residual stress.
Smithers Rapra offers many services to assist in taking new products from concept to reality.
Material Selection
Independent selection of the most suitable plastic for the application based
on operational requirements and environmental conditions.
Should a bespoke material be required to meet the requirements, Smithers
Rapra can support formulation and undertake sample manufacture for
evaluation purposes.

Long-Term Mechanical Data Generation

Static and dynamic fatigue material data in the
operating environment allow accurate lifetime
predictions to be made. Data of this type is available
from material suppliers is often inadequate and many
make the mistake of basing their design calculations
using only the short term data that is available

Stress Analysis
Determine the stress levels and
displacement in a part under operating
loads using Abaqus FEA software.
Fibre orientation and residual stress data
can be imported from injection moulding
simulations.

Failure diagnosis
If things do go wrong and products are found to fail in the field,
Smithers Rapra can investigate to find the root cause and assist in
preventing a reoccurrence. In undertaking the investigation, a wide
range of testing and polymer analysis tools established at Smithers
Rapra can be deployed.
All information is supplied to the client in strict confidence.

Smithers Rapra
T: +44 (0) 1939 250383 F: +44 (0) 1939 251118 E: info@rapra.net W: www.rapra.net
Injection moulding simulation
•Full 3D thermal modelling of part, inserts and tooling.
Smithers Rapra uses 3D-Sigma
injection moulding simulation
software to give a true 3D
simulation of filling and cooling
in the mould. True 3D offers
several advantages including:

•Full Navier Stokes solver to

model jetting effects.

•Accurate predictions of residual stresses and distortion.

Distorted geometry can be exported as CAD data for
tolerance analysis and prototyping.

•Prediction of fibre orientation in

3D, allowing fibre orientation to be
visualised through the thickness of
the part.
Anisotropic solver for fibre
reinforced materials (stress and
distortion in the part takes account
of the fibre orientation resulting from •Export of fibre orientation
the flow of the polymer). and residual stress data for
use in FEA calculations.

Smithers Rapra
T: +44 (0) 1939 250383 F: +44 (0) 1939 251118 E: info@rapra.net W: www.rapra.net