Digital Twin FOAM: Multiscale-Simulation Chain for Foam Components

Foam products exhibit various properties that make them attractive for a wide variety of applications, especially for lightweight construction. They are useful in shock applications, acoustics, and thermal ­insulation. Industries such as the automotive, aircraft, refrigeration, construction, and packaging industries in particular benefit from these features in fabricating cost-effective products.

The Digital Twin FOAM enables the complete digitalization of development, design and manufacturing processes of foamed components – taking into account the local foam properties.

FOAM-Simulation of Reaction Injection Molding Processes

Our software FOAM simulates the expansion process of foams in any given geometry and offers the possibility to calculate the foam formation process as well as the resulting foam density in closed moulds in advance. This means FOAM simulates the Reaction Injection Molding (RIM) process of foams as well as its expansion through porous textile reinforcing structures. Complicated requirements for mould filling can be predicted by FOAM, such as:

• vent locations
• inlet position
• amount of material needed to fill the cavity
  
• the necessity to avoid entrapment of gas in the mould

We Offer:

• Foaming of various foams (polyurethane PU, soft foam, rigid foam) in complex geometries
• Simulation based design of foam moulds (placement or path of injection nozzles, position of venting, inclination angle)
• Process design of foaming processes for insulation components, sandwich panels, seats etc.
  
• Process design of textile-reinforced PU foam lightweight structures
  

Our Software FOAM:

• includes a user-friendly graphical user interface
• provides an integrated pre-processing tool for CAD-3D data
• enables interactive postprocessing using free software in *.vtk format
• uses multicore computing technology and runs on Windows and Linux operating systems
• includes an automated parameter identification of rheology information from foaming experiments