This study focuses on overmolding, a unique injection molding process. It enables a seamless combination of multiple materials into a single part. The bottleneck of overmolding is the interface strength between the paired elements.Interface strength depends on numerous factors, such as the interface topology, the physical and chemical properties of the paired materials, and the processing parameters of overmolding. These factors have a large number of possible combinations. This necessitates a modeling approach to predict the interface properties and find the optimal processing parameters of overmolding at an early design stage. Although injection molding is a well-known field for simulation, adhesion modeling between the substrate and overmolded elements is missing in all available simulation software. Our goal is to develop a simulation methodology that combines analytical models with simulation tools, to predict interface strength during overmolding. The principal novelty of the proposed methodology is that it considers the space-time dependency of the interface temperature-this has a significant influence on interface strength. We proved that the methodology we developed gives the most accurate results; it predicts the bonding strength of overmolded ABS, PC and PS parts with an error of less than 7%.
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