Thermal and mechanical coupling in granular modeling for metal injection molding

Metal injection molding (MIM) employs viscous thermoplastic polymer materials (binders)_ with metallic powders to improve flowability and formability. It is essential to be able to describe the behavior of such mixed materials, for this purpose a new granular model being proposed to deal with the powder characteristics and mechanics. The composite element is designed to consider both elasticity and viscosity for powder particles and binders. A thermal and mechanical coupling effect is introduced directly to describe the cooling process. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of the presently-developed granular modeling in dealing with the various phenomena appearing in the MIM process.