Finite Element Methods for Analyzing Thermal Deformation of Large Plastic Components

In order to reduce the total vehicle development lead-time, one of the above authors has developed an analytical technology to quantitatively predict the thermal deformation of plastic components by taking into account the creep behavior. However, this technology still needs to be improved to be generally applicable.

Plastic characteristics were studied. It was discovered that the estimation error in FEM analysis of thermal deformation should be attributed to (1) creep dependence on stress state; (2) thermal shrinkage, which takes place when plastic component is exposed to elevated temperature.

Then, computation methods are developed to take into account the two factors in FEM analysis. Verification and application examples of the developed methods are reported.