Introduction of Micro-Scale CFD Model of Foam Injection Moulding Process

Foam injection moulding (FIM) enables lightweight thermoplastic parts, but current process simulations do not resolve microstructure formation. This work presents a micro-scale CFD framework for FIM that captures gas-melt interaction and bubble morphology. A two-phase, compressible volume-of-fluid solver (OpenFOAM) with surface tension and viscoelastic Phan-Thien-Tanner rheology is coupled to a nucleation pre-processor based on classical nucleation theory, which places bubbles stochastically using macro-scale pressure and temperature histories. The approach was demonstrated on a plate geometry using a 2D through-thickness section to investigate bubble nucleation, deformation, coalescence, and interaction under realistic process conditions. The simulations reproduced characteristic morphology trends across the thickness. In particular, the predicted aspect ratio and orientation show the expected skin-core behaviour and agree qualitatively with experimental observations. These results demonstrate that the framework can describe morphology development beyond simplified spherical-cell assumptions and provides a proof of concept for multiscale coupling between macro-scale process conditions and micro-scale foam structure evolution. A simplified surrogate growth representation was used to enable bubble expansion; however, a physically based mass-transfer model is required for quantitatively accurate growth kinetics.