SIGMA Engineering and Momentive Performance Materials have agreed on a strategic partnership to optimise material data for silicone elastomers to make process simulation with SIGMASOFT Virtual Molding more reliable.

×

Expand

Sigma and Momentive

The companies say the partnership is good news for the silicone processing industry. The challenge is to produce high-precision components with high requirements that simultaneously exhibit the highest thermal expansion and the greatest compressibility of all elastomers. The more precise the material data and understanding of the material, the better the predictions made by the simulation. The partnership aims to offer high added value for this industry thanks to the synergies created.  

The use of standardised laboratory values for the definition of material laws in the simulation is not sufficient to describe the complex behavior of components. The observation and consideration of process parameters during processing is not yet part of conventional material data. In future, it will be necessary to use data from real injection molding processing to refine and calibrate the material data. This improves the reliability of the simulation results as well as the material data. 

Thomas Klein, managing director of SIGMA Engineering, said: "Partnerships are formed to create something bigger together and offer added value to the market."

Holger Albrecht, vice president and head of the Elastomer Business Unit at Momentive, added: "We are very much looking forward to working together with SIGMA Engineering. The more precise the material data in LSR processing, the more accurate the simulation can be. This is certainly an advantage for companies in the silicone processing industry - because there is potential for far-reaching optimisations in the manufacturing process."