Molding Fill Submit

Injection-molding FILL (+ optional PACK/COOL) solve, asynchronous — the higher- fidelity twin molding_screen escalates to. Answers can this geometry actually be molded: short-shot / fill ability (the strongest, most reliable gate), fill time, and a peak injection-pressure proxy — a real two-phase (melt + air) flow solve, not the spiral-flow correlation. Requires an OpenFOAM binary; when none resolves this returns {ok:false, reason, install} rather than raising.

Backend: when the openInjMoldSim binary resolves (GPL-3.0, a modified compressibleInterFoam on OpenFOAM-7 .org — Cross-WLF + 2-domain Tait), the worker generates and runs an OF7-org case from the params below (or runs a prepared case_dir if given) — a pressure-driven, non-isothermal plaque fill with the Cross-WLF/Tait coefficients pulled from the materials corpus for resin. Where that build is absent it falls back to a 2-D plaque-cavity interFoam VOF case on the existing OpenFOAM (.com/ESI) — same physics family, answers fill/short-shot but not packing. The GPL solver is held at the subprocess boundary (never imported).

openInjMoldSim (OF7) params: resin (corpus key, default "PS"), length_mm, wall_thickness_mm (gap), depth_mm, nx/ny, peak_pressure_mpa (gate ramp, default 2), melt_temp_c (220), mold_temp_c (60), wall_h_w_m2k (wall heat- transfer coeff; default ~adiabatic for a clean fill — raise for freeze-off), fill_end (terminate fraction, default 0.98). Pass application to force the interFoam-prepared path.

Packing/cooling (openInjMoldSim only): set stages="fill_pack" to also run the cooling continuation after fill (seal the gate, switch walls to cooling, hold). Knobs: pack_phases (default 2), cool_window_s (cooling duration; default a few× the fill time — note a 1 mm wall cools in ~seconds, so a short window gives partial cooling), eject_temp_c (for cooling-time; default 80), pack_wall_h_w_m2k (cool-side wall coeff; default 1250). The pack result adds pack:{rho_mean_final, rho_min, volumetric_shrinkage_pct, frozen_fraction, cooling_time_s, residual_pressure_pa} and pack_gate:{pass (on sink risk), score, volumetric_shrinkage_pct, expected_densification_pct (Tait-EOS), pvt_faithful, sink_risk, warnings}.

Net mold shrinkage (the cavity-sizing number; issue #116) — distinct from pack_gate's raw-PVT densification. The fill_pack result also models the packing-feed make-up (melt fed at the hold pressure until the gate freezes at the Tait no-flow transition; only the uncompensated post-gate-freeze densification is net shrinkage) and gates it against the resin's published linear band. hold_pressure_pa (effective cavity packing pressure; default = the ramp peak), room_temp_c (free-part relax temperature; default 23). Adds net_shrinkage:{net_linear_pct, net_vol_pct, raw_vol_pct, compensated_vol_pct, gate_freeze_temp_k} and shrinkage_gate:{pass (in corpus band), score, net_linear_pct, corpus_band_pct, in_band, warnings}. Plus cooling_dT_through_k — the antisymmetric through-thickness differential auto-derived from the cooling field, ready to flow straight into molding_warpage_submit (pass it, or pass this result's case_dir+nx/ny as cooling_case_dir etc.).

Asymmetric per-wall cooling (#134): set pack_wall_h_low_w_m2k and pack_wall_h_high_w_m2k (the y=0 and y=H mold-face heat-transfer coeffs) to DIFFERENT values to model an asymmetric cool — the case is meshed with split wallLow/wallHigh patches and each face cools at its own rate, freezing a real through-thickness bending differential. This is what makes the live cooling_dT_through_k nonzero (a symmetric cool correctly gives ≈0 → no warp). The part bows toward the slower-cooled (lower-h, hotter, last-to-freeze) face; the result adds asymmetric_cooling:{pack_wall_h_low_w_m2k, pack_wall_h_high_w_m2k, warps_toward}. Leave both unset (or equal) for the default symmetric cool. Feed the resulting case_dir into molding_warpage_submit to predict the warp magnitude.

Drive the interFoam path with cavity + process params:

• length_mm (flow length, default 100), wall_thickness_mm (cavity height, default 2), depth_mm (out-of-plane, default 1), mesh nx/ny.

• inject_velocity_m_s OR flow_rate_cm3_s (+ optional gate_height_mm for the gate area) — the melt mean inlet speed.

• melt rheology: melt_rho_kg_m3 (default 900), melt_nu_m2_s (kinematic, default 1e-3) for Newtonian, or a carreau {nu0,nuInf,k,n} BirdCarreau dict (the shear-thinning Cross-WLF stand-in).

• end_time_s (run bound; default ≈4× the plug-flow fill time), machine_max_pressure_pa (press limit, default 180 MPa), fill_fraction_pass (full-fill threshold, default 0.97). Or pass a prepared case_dir to run the resolved solver directly.

Returns the degradation dict, or {job_id, status, cache_hit}; poll job_result. interFoam result: {ok, returncode, backend, case_dir, expected_fill_time_s, flow_length_ratio, fill:{filled_fraction, filled_cell_fraction, front_x_frac, last_to_fill_x_frac, max_pressure_pa}, gate:{pass, score, fidelity:"solve", band_pct, short_shot, fill_time_s, max_pressure_pa, pressure_ok, warnings}}.