AUTONOMOUS ARRANGEMENT OF COOLING CHANNELS LAYOUT IN INJECTION MOLDING

摘要

This paper deals with a methodology for designing an effective layout of cooling channels to make a desired temperature distribution on cavity surface in injection molding. A cooling channel is modeled as several Cooling Elements that remove heat from a cavity surface. These elements move in the mold according to the information that is ordained by Source Elements located on a cavity surface to estimate temperature distribution on cavity surface. A layout of cooling channels is autonomously decided through an interplay between Cooling Elements and Source Elements. Several numerical experiments assuming heat-transfer to be steady-heat conduction have been a good indication that this method can design an effective layout of cooling channels and can estimate the necessary number of cooling channels.