Title: Numerical study of profiled conformal cooling channels for cooling time reduction in injection mould tools

Authors: Khurram Altaf; Ahmad Majdi bin Abdul Rani

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia

Abstract: In injection moulding, cooling time for polymer and process thermal management are critical issues having key effects on process cycle times. In the conventional injection moulds, cooling channels have circular cross-section due to the manufacturing technique of drilling. In a circular channel, there can be a problem that the distance from the edges of channel to the cavity is not constant and is variable even for conformal channels. In this study, injection mould designing and thermal simulations are performed and a comparison is presented between circular cooling channel mould with profiled cooling channel mould. The objective for the current study is to propose a new design of cooling channel for the reduction in the cooling time for injection moulding process. Thermal simulations indicate that profiled channels were dissipating heat more effectively than circular channels and hence profiled channels would have a reduced cooling time than circular channels.

Keywords: profiled channels; injection moulding; conformal cooling channels; CCCs; thermal management; simulation; cooling time reduction; mould design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESMS.2015.072508

International Journal of Engineering Systems Modelling and Simulation, 2015 Vol.7 No.4, pp.230 - 237

Received: 16 May 2013
Accepted: 22 Apr 2014
Published online: 16 Oct 2015 *

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