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Effect of mould temperature on high-resilience cold-cure flexible polyurethane foam surface texture

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journal contribution
posted on 2008-07-31, 10:05 authored by A.M. Abdul-Rani, Neil Hopkinson, Phill M. Dickens
Flexible polyurethane foam is often molded directly into preheated tools for foaming reaction which expands to fill the mold cavity. The foam that is directly in contact with the mold surface cures as the foam skin. Parts frequently have surface defects ranging from shrink marks, to voids, to mottling and knit lines. There are many possible causes such as applying too much or too little release agent, or mold surface not cleaned and conditioned as required before the foaming process. Uneven mold temperatures are also suspected to be a cause of surface defects, especially in high-resilience (HR) cold cure polyurethane foam systems. A specially designed mold capable of maintaining tight temperature tolerance was built to produce foam samples at varying temperatures. The effects of mold surface temperature on the foam surface texture are studied and analyzed. The effect of processing temperature on the macro and micro surface texture is examined. It is shown that the processing temperature has a significant effect on the foam surface texture. 3D topographical analysis of foam surface texture discovered a trend from samples produced at varying temperature from 30 to 80 C.

Funding

This research is funded by EPSRC and assisted by Collins and Aikman UK and Rojac Tooling Technologies Ltd.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Citation

ABDUL-RANI, A.M., HOPKINSON, N. and DICKENS, P.M., 2005. Effect of mould temperature on high-resilience cold-cure flexible polyurethane foam surface texture. Journal of cellular plastics, 41 (2), pp. 133-151.

Publisher

© Sage

Publication date

2005

Notes

This is a journal article. It was published in the journal, Journal of cellular plastics [© Sage] and the definitive version is available at: http://cel.sagepub.com

ISSN

0021-955X

Language

  • en

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