Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites

http://jrp.sagepub.com Neural Modeling of Parison Extrusion in Extrusion Blow Molding

Han-Xiong Huang and Song Lu Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites 2005; 24; 1025 DOI: 10.1177/0731684405048201 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jrp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/10/1025

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Neural Modeling of Parison Extrusion in Extrusion Blow Molding

HAN-XIONG HUANG* AND SONG LU Center for Polymer Processing Equipment and Intellectualization College of Industrial Equipment and Control Engineering South China University of Technology Guangzhou, Peoples Republic of China
ABSTRACT: Back-propagation (BP) neural network is used to develop process models for the parison extrusion in extrusion blow molding based on experimental data. In applying the BP network, some modifications, such as using a self-adaptive learning rate coefficient, determining the number of hidden neurons through experimentation, and so on, to the original BP algorithm are carried out to speed up learning. Quite a good agreement has been reached between the predicted parison length and swells using the trained BP models and the experimentally determined ones. The prediction of the parison diameter and thickness distributions can be made online at any parison length or any parison drop time within a given range using the trained models. It has been demonstrated that nonlinear swells, under the effect of sag, can be predicted within a reasonably adequate accuracy. KEY WORDS: neural network, extrusion blow molding, parison extrusion, swell, sag.

INTRODUCTION

polymer melt extrusion is the swell of the extrudate as it leaves the extrusion die [1]. In addition to the extrudate swell, another phenomenon, occurring during the parison extrusion stage in plastics extrusion blow molding, is sag or drawdown. Extrusion blow molding is one of the most prominent plastics processing techniques because of a number of technical and economical advantages concerning the low-pressure characteristic of the process and the facility to produce complex-shaped parts with very thin walls. It has evolved from being a technique for producing packaging containers to a process for manufacturing industrial parts of automobiles, office automation equipment, etc. [2]. Extrusion blow molded parts must meet strict dimension distribution requirements to provide the necessary strength and rigidity with minimum material usage. The final part dimension distributions are directly influenced by parison dimensions [3]. It is both the swell and sag that determines the parison dimensions, including the diameter and thickness. Therefore, it is critical to be able to predict the swell or sag of the parison during its extrusion.

N IMPORTANT PHENOMENON in

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mmhuang@scut.edu.cn

Journal of REINFORCED PLASTICS

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COMPOSITES, Vol. 24, No. 10/2005

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0731-6844/05/10 102510 $10.00/0 DOI: 10.1177/0731684405048201 2005 Sage Publications

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Swell or sag, however, is not a property that can be predicted accurately from measurements of molecular structure or from other rheological measurements. Moreover, it is dependent on materials characteristics, processing conditions, die geometry, and time after extrusion. Numerical simulations on the swell and sag involve significant simplifications and are quite time consuming [46]. Accurate numerical prediction of the swell and sag is quite difficult. So parison extrusion is the most difficult-to-analyze stage in extrusion blow molding [2]. Furthermore, swell or sag is a nonlinear behavior. This means that the dependency between parison dimensions and materials characteristics, processing conditions, and die geometry is a nonlinear one. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), as mathematical models developed to mimic certain information storing and processing capabilities of the brain of higher animals, can model highly nonlinear systems without using complex deduction rules or large data. Huang and Liao [7,8] preliminarily utilized the neural network method to predict the diameter and thickness swells of the parison in extrusion blow molding and showed that this method can predict the parison swells with a high degree of precision. In this study, back-propagation (BP) neural networks were constructed to predict the parison dimensions affected by a combination of the swell and sag on the base of experiments. Back-propagation neural network, developed by Rumelhart and his colleagues [9], is now the most used training algorithm for multilayer feed-forward neural networks because of its simplicity, power to extract useful information from examples, and capability of storing information implicitly in the connecting links in the form of weights. It comprises a highly interconnected set of processing units, called neurons, organized in layers. Each neuron receives inputs, multiplies them by the corresponding connection weight and sums up all with a bias, in order to obtain the neuron activation. The neuron output is obtained by applying a function to this activation. The original BP algorithm has been of great concern to practical users for many reasons: (1) it is extremely slow if it does converge; (2) it may get stuck in local minima before learning all the examples; (3) it is sensitive to initial conditions; (4) it may start oscillating, and so on. Now many modifications have been proposed to improve the performance of the original BP algorithm [1013]. So some modifications were carried out to the original BP algorithm to speed it up in this work. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE In order to develop ANN models, the experiments must be carefully planned to obtain the data. An extrusion blow molding grade HDPE 5300B resin, manufactured by Petrochina Daqing Petrochemical Co., was used in this work. This resin has a melt index of 0.41 g/ 10 min and a solid density of 0.952 g/cm3. An extrusion blow molding machine with a screw diameter of 45 mm and a length-to-diameter ratio of 25 : 1 was used. The parison extrusion die used is a convergent one, shown in Figure 1, with an outer diameter (D0) of 25 mm and a lip gap (H0) of 2 mm. The parison profiles were monitored using the visualization technique developed by the authors. A video capture system was employed to access the images of the parison online. The capture system mainly includes a color video camera and a video capture card, the former is mounted perpendicular to the axis of the parison, and the latter is installed in a personal computer. The analog signal from the former is sent to the latter that digitizes and compresses the video images in one step, directly onto the hard disk of the computer.

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Figure 1. Schematic of extrusion die of parison and its swells.

Ink marks were put on the outer surface of the parison just below the die exit at the same time interval during the parison extrusion. The outer diameter corresponding to each ink mark and the distance between two adjacent ink marks were determined by analyzing the digitized video images of the parison. In order to predict the dimensions of the parison during its extrusion using the neural network method, the images with five different parison lengths, 100, 150, 200, 250, and 300 mm, respectively, were captured. The corresponding time when the parison reached each length was determined by analyzing the images. Twenty marks were put on the parison with different lengths. Knowing the outer diameter (Dp) corresponding to each ink mark and the distance (l ) between two adjacent ink marks, the thickness (Hp) for each parison segment, assumed cylindrical symmetry, can be calculated on the basis of mass conservation: Dp Hp 2 s  2 Dp Qt 2 l

where Q is the extrusion flow rate, t the time between two adjacent ink marks, and  the melt density of material used. The swell of an annular parison (shown in Figure 1) is described using two swell ratios, namely, diameter swell (SD) and thickness swell (SH): SD SH DP D0 Hp H0 2 3

For each parison length, four different extrusion flow rates, 4.8, 10.3, 15.2, and 17.1 kg/h, and three different die temperatures, 170, 200, and 230 C, were used. Thus, 60

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(5 4 3) sets of data, that is, 60 sets of the drop time of the parison and its diameter and thickness swell values with different length extruded at different processing conditions, were obtained. NEURAL NETWORK DESIGNING AND TRAINING Determination of the Network Architecture It has been shown (e.g., [14]) that ANNs with only one hidden layer can approximate any function, given that sufficient degrees of freedom (i.e., connection weights) are provided. Hence, BP networks with three layers, namely, input layer, hidden layer, and output layer, were used. Here two BP network models (shown in Figure 2) with three layers were constructed. The architecture of the network model 1 includes three input parameters representing the parison drop time (t) from the start of extrusion, die temperature (T ), and extrusion flow rate (Q), respectively, and just one output parameter representing the parison length (L) corresponding to the time of t. The architecture of the network Model 2 includes three input parameters, L, T, and Q, and 20 output parameters, predicted diameter or thickness swells of 20 points along the parison during its extrusion process. The choice of an appropriate number of hidden layer neurons, however, is not a straightforward task. Using insufficient neurons impairs the neural network and prevents the correct mapping of input to output. Using too many neurons impedes generalization and increases training time. Here the number of hidden neurons was determined through experimentation. This can be expressed as follows: The network models were trained with part patterns, selected randomly from the training patterns, using the same algorithm. The training started with one neuron and three neurons for Models 1 and 2, respectively, and stopped when there is no significant improvement in the sum of squared error (SSE) with further increase in the number of hidden neurons. Figure 3 shows the SSE versus the number of hidden neurons after 10,000 training iterations. As can be observed, the SSE decreases steeply at the initial stage of increasing the number of hidden neurons, but then

Figure 2. Schematic of BP neural network architecture.

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Figure 3. Comparison of the sum of squared error (SSE) for the BP models with different hidden neurons.

the curve flattens or exhibits some fluctuation. From this figure, four and sixteen hidden neurons were finally determined for the network Models 1 and 2, respectively. Network Training and Testing As mentioned in the Experimental Section, 60 data sets were obtained from experiments by changing the die temperature, extrusion flow rate, and parison length for each network model. For Model 1, 55 among the 60 data sets were used as training patterns to train the neural network to ascertain its weight and threshold values. The remaining five data sets were used as testing patterns to test the trained neural network to verify the model. For Model 2, 54 data sets were used as training patterns and the remaining six data sets were used as testing patterns. It has been shown that in many cases, a sigmoid activation function yields good learning results [9]. So the sigmoid activation function was used in this study. It is usually necessary to preprocess the data before presenting the patterns to the BP network, because the sigmoid activation function modulates the output of each neuron to values between 0 and 1. Here the following normalization procedure was used: V0 V Vmin 0:8 0:1 Vmax Vmin 4

where V is the original data, Vmin and Vmax the minimum and maximum values of V, respectively, and V0 the normalized data of the corresponding V. Thus, each value V is scaled to its normalized value V0 between 0.1 and 0.9. It is generally believed that initial weight and threshold values have some influence on the convergence of the BP network. If the initial weights are too large, the activation function of neurons (the sigmoid function) will very possibly reach saturation and thus, the whole BP network will get stuck in the local minima. However, Maier and Dandy [15] have showed that commencing training the BP networks from different points in weight space (i.e., different initial weight distributions) did not have any significant impact on the learning speed and the generalization ability. Here initial weight and threshold values were randomly chosen between 0 and 1. For the BP network, the convergence speed of the training procedure is obviously dependent on the learning rate coefficient and the momentum coefficient. The main

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problem with the original BP algorithm is that it has a constant learning rate coefficient, and different regions of the error surface may have different characteristic gradients that may require a dynamic change of learning rate coefficient based on the nature of the surface [11]. So a modified BP learning algorithm was utilized with a momentum term and a self-adaptive learning rate coefficient. The momentum coefficient was set at 0.8, the initial learning rate coefficient was set at 0.01, the learning rate coefficient increasing factor was set at 1.1, and the learning rate coefficient decreasing factor was set at 0.7. The learning rate coefficient was continuously modified during training. Training was conducted by repeatedly accessing the entire set of training patterns, with the weights and thresholds updated at the end of each cycle. Once the SSE for the training patterns reduced within a given tolerance (set at 0.001 in this study), or the number of training iterations reached a predetermined one (set at 50,000 in this study), the network training was considered complete. After being trained, the networks were tested through several sets of input data, different from those used in the training stage in order to examine the validity of the models in predicting the outputs. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The drop time of the parison when it reached a given length and its diameter swell were determined by analyzing its video images extruding at different die temperature, extrusion flow rate, and parison length. Then the parison thickness swell was calculated on the basis of diameter swell. Shown in Figure 4(a) is the parison diameter and thickness swells at a

Figure 4. Experimentally determined diameter and thickness swells of the parison with different lengths. (a) T 200 C, Q 4.8 kg/h and (b) T 170 C, Q 17.1 kg/h.

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die temperature of 200 C and a flow rate of 4.8 kg/h for five different parison lengths; Figure 4(b) shows the swells at 170 C and 17.1 kg/h. Training data were provided to the neural networks to train them. After being trained, the network Model 1 ascertains the quantitative relationship between the parison length and the parison drop time, die temperature, and flow rate, i.e., L F (t, T, Q), and Model 2 ascertains the quantitative relationship between the parison swells and the parison length, die temperature, and flow rate, i.e., Si G(L, T, Q), (i D, H). Then combining these two models, the quantitative relationship between the parison swells and the parison drop time, die temperature, and flow rate, i.e., Si f (t, Q, T), (i D, H), was developed. This means that the swells can be predicted at any time within a given range during parison extrusion process. The error between the predicted output value from the network model and the experimental value could be obtained after testing the trained network. Table 1 shows the relative error between the predicted parison length from Model 1 and the experimentally determined one. As can be seen, the relative error is less than 0.01. Table 2 gives the SSE for the parison swells predicted from Model 2. The SSE for the thickness swell is slightly larger than that for the diameter swell. This may be attributed to the fact that the thickness swell was calculated indirectly from the measured diameter swell. However, whatever the diameter swell or the thickness swell, the SSE is very small (less than 0.001). Therefore, the trained neural network Models 1 and 2 show a high degree of prediction precision. Figure 5 compares the predicted parison diameter and thickness swells from the trained network Model 2 with corresponding experimental results. Comparison yields a very good agreement between the two. Once being trained and tested, the neural network models are identified and can be used to predict the outputs from the measured process data. Thus, the parison length and swells, under the effect of sag, can be predicted from the processing parameters resorting
Table 1. Comparison of predicted parison length (A) from Model 1 and experimentally determined one (B) and relative error (|A B|/B) between the two.
Flow rate (kg/h) 4.8 4.8 10.3 15.2 17.1 Drop time (s) 4 35 14 12 8 Die temperature ( C) 170 170 200 230 200 A (mm) 46.05 271.12 206.91 242.29 189.01 B (mm) 45.6 269.4 208.1 240.6 187.8 |A B|/B 0.00987 0.00638 0.00572 0.00702 0.00644

Table 2. Sum of squared error (SSE) for predicted parison swells from Model 2.
Network inputs Die temperature ( C) 170 170 200 200 230 230 Flow rate (kg/h) 10.3 17.1 4.8 15.2 4.8 15.2 Parison length (mm) 200 300 100 250 300 150 SSE (103) Diameter swell 0.52873 0.38276 0.08173 0.50321 0.67582 0.62321 Thickness swell 0.89153 0.54367 0.10711 0.62126 0.81890 0.68298

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Figure 5. Comparison of predicted diameter and thickness swells of parison from network Model 2 with experimental results. T 170 C, Q 10.3 kg/h.

Figure 6. Predicted diameter and thickness swells of the parison with different lengths from network models. (a) T 230 C, Q 8 kg/h and (b) T 180 C, Q 15 kg/h.

to the network models, thereby reducing the amount of experimental work. Figure 6 shows some results of the swell prediction of the parison with different lengths by the network models. As can be seen, the swells at the same distance from the die exit decrease gradually with the increasing parison length. This is caused by gravity that acts on the suspended parison. Moreover, after the parison length exceeds a certain value (about 100150 mm), the swells at the bottom of the parison remain about the same values. This

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Figure 7. Predicted parison diameter and thickness swells from network models at four different die temperatures ( C): (1) 230; (2) 210; (3) 190; and (4) 170. Q 13 kg/h.

Figure 8. Predicted parison diameter and thickness swells from network models at six different flow rates (kg/h): (1) 5; (2) 7.5; (3) 10.0; (4) 12.5; (5) 15.0; and (6) 17.0. T 190 C.

is because that almost no gravity acts on the parison bottom and so the swells at the bottom are mainly affected by the viscoelastic recovery, which has completed after the parison reaches an enough length. Shown in Figures 7 and 8 are the parison diameter and thickness swells predicted by the network models at four different die temperatures and six different flow rates, respectively. As expected, swells increase as the melt temperature decreases or the flow rate increases. CONCLUSIONS The length evolution of the parison and its diameter and thickness swells during its extrusion in extrusion blow molding were experimentally investigated as a function of the processing parameters including the die temperature and flow rate. A back-propagation (BP) neural network based approach was applied to the experimental data, leading to network models for predicting the parison dimension distributions online at any parison length or any parison drop time within a given range. Some modifications to the original BP algorithm were adopted to speed it up. For example, it was demonstrated that the number of neurons in the hidden layer of BP network has some effects on its performance.

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1034 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Financial support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (50290090), Teaching and Research Award Program for Outstanding Young Teachers in Higher Education Institutions of MOE, P.R.C., and SRFDP (20010514002) is gratefully acknowledged. REFERENCES
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