Isolate the Cause of Warpage

New result plots for Warp analysis help you isolate the cause of warpage when designing plastic parts.

Warpage occurs to plastic molded parts because of three main causes: nonuniform shrinkage, differential cooling, and molecular or fiber orientation. The image shows result plots of the total deformation and the component deformation because of warpage. Understanding the dominant cause of warpage helps you make appropriate changes to the part or mold design, material, and manufacturing process to minimize design defects.

The Warp analysis in SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2025 isolates the cause of warpage by calculating, at each node, the component of total deformation attributed to each source. The following result plots are available, along with the Total Deformation plot, to assist you in identifying the cause of warpage.
Result Plot - Warp Analysis Description
Deformation – Nonuniform Shrinkage Shows the deformation that can be attributed to nonuniform mold temperatures, differential cooling rates between thin and thick sections of a part, and shrinkage variations between the direction of melt flow and transverse to the direction of melt flow.

(In general, these deformations occur because of nonuniform pressure, temperature, and shear stress distributions across the surface area or throughout the volume of a molded part.)
Deformation – Differential Cooling Shows the deformation that can be attributed to nonuniform cooling arising from temperature variations across the injection mold’s core and cavity surfaces.

Nonuniform part cooling generally leads to nonuniform shrinkage and in-mold stresses, which both contribute to warpage.
Deformation – Orientation Effects Shows the deformation that can be attributed to anisotropy from the orientation of fillers in the material, such as short glass fibers or carbon fibers.

For materials without any fillers, this deformation is negligible.

You might notice slightly longer Warp analysis solve times because of the additional computation time required to calculate the components of the total warp deformations. The result plots that isolate the cause of warpage are available only for the Solid Mesh procedure.