Review of research in the determination of process parameters for plastic injection molding

This article aims to review the research in determining process parameters of injection molding. A number of research works based on various approache s have been performed in the domain of the parameter setting for injection molding. These approaches, including mathematical models, numerical simulat ion, process windows, design of experiment (DOE), expert systems, Artificia l Neural Networks (ANN), Case Based Reasoning (CBR), Genetic Algorithms (GA ), and evolutionary strategies, are described in this article. The strength and the weakness of individual approaches are discussed. It is then follow ed by conclusions and discussions of the potential research in determining process parameters for injection molding. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.