Prediction of birefringence in plastics optical elements using 3D CAE for injection molding

Recent improvements of plastics optics performance and manufacturing technology of plastics lenses have resulte din rapid applicationfo plastics otical elements. On eof the factors indelyaing the applications of the plastics oticalelements is the existence of birefringence in palstics lenses. It gives us a challenge to resolve th proboem so that the plastics oticalelements can achieve much higher levels of performance. It is generally recongized that the mechanism of birefringence generation is relevant to the resin behaviors during the injection molding process. If this mechanism is fully understood by flow analysis, it may be a great contribution to the fabrication of plastics optical elements. However, convetnioanl two-dimensional flow anlaysis on onjection molding fails to graps th ephenomena of birfringence. in this paper, we have successfully indentified some phenomena on onjection molding that are closely related to the gneratioof birefringence.We anlayzed th ephenomean in detial sin filling pakcing, and colling processes durin th einjection modlin process using tthree-dimensional CAE system, called 3D TIMON. The anlayzed rsults were confirmed experimentally and theyenabled us to predict the generation of birefringence by CAE analysis.© (2000) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.