Effect of Elastic Modulus on the Accuracy of the Finite Element Method in Simulating Precision Glass Molding

Abstract

Precision glass molding is a revolutionary technology for achieving high precision and efficient manufacturing of glass aspheric lenses. The material properties of glass, including elastic modulus and viscosity, are highly dependent on temperature fluctuations. This paper aims to investigate the effect of elastic modulus on the high-temperature viscoelasticity of glass and the accuracy of the finite element simulation of the molding process for glass aspheric lenses. The high-temperature elastic modulus of D-ZK3L glass is experimentally measured and combined with the glass cylinder compression creep curve to calculate the high temperature viscoelasticity of D-ZK3L. Three groups of viscoelastic parameters are obtained. Based on this, the molding process of the molded aspheric lens is simulated by the nonlinear finite element method (FEM). The surface curves of lenses obtained by simulation and theoretical analyses are consistent. The simulation results obtained at different initial elastic modulus values indicate that the elastic modulus has a great influence on the precision of the FEM-based molding process of glass aspheric lenses.

Deformation Analysis of the Glass Preform in the Progress of Precision Glass Molding for Fabricating Chalcogenide Glass Diffractive Optics with the Finite Element Method

“…The viscoelastic parameters of glass D-ZK3L at 550 • C, which can be a molding temperature, were used for the finite element simulations. The viscoelastic properties of glass D-ZK3L, other thermal properties of glass IRG206, and mechanical properties of the mold were listed in Table 4 [28][29][30]. The diagram of the established finite element model with boundary conditions is shown in Figure 6.…”