Three-dimensional transient finite element cooling simulation for injection molding tools

A numerical framework for three-dimensional optimization of cooling channels in thermoplastic printed molds

“…It is worth mentioning that wherever a TCR is set between two domain surfaces, an algorithm was developed in the framework of this work to duplicate the nodes on each domain in order to properly model the temperature gap due to the non-perfect contact. Contrary to the work of Chen et al [46], a conformal mesh approach is followed here, and it is further discussed in Section 3.4.1.…”

“…Since non-perfect contacts are considered at the mold-mold and part-mold interfaces in this work, two main approaches can be followed in the FEM context to cope with the different temperatures of each contact surface: the conformal and the non-conformal mesh approaches [46] (see Fig. 6).…”

“…6). For complex geometries, the non-conformal mesh scheme followed by Chen et al [46] (see Fig. 6a) for the simulation of a complete IM process is more practical since each domain can be meshed independently.…”

“…Regarding the thermal contact resistance between the ABS polymer and the steel insert T CR 1−2 , a constant value of 10 −3 m 2 K W −1 is considered in this communication [44]. For the contact between the steel molds, a constant value of 3.33 × 10 −5 m 2 K W −1 [46] is employed. Given the lack of specific information in the literature on TCR for newly developed polymer matrix composites [52,53], TCR values of the plastic insert are approximated as follows: the TCR for the contact between the PC10%CF insert and the steel mold is taken to be 6 × 10 −3 m 2 K W −1 [54], and the polymer-polymer interface is modeled considering a value of 10 −2 m 2 K W −1 [53].…”

“…where ∆T ci−o is the temperature difference between the inlet temperature T ci and the outlet temperature T co , while ρ F and Cp F are the density and the heat capacity of the fluid. From such estimation it is obtained that the temperature variation of the coolant is negligible, (∆T ci−o ≈ 0.3 • C), allowing the simplification of the temperature variation inside the CCs to a constant value, which is a common practice in the IM process modelling [9,46,58]. Even though the aforementioned simplification is employed throughout this work, it should not be considered as a limitation of the optimization methodology (later depicted in Section 5), since the scheme could be directly extended to solve diffusion-advection inside the CCs to account for large variations of ∆T ci−o , or, furthermore, to be coupled to the Navier-Stokes module of PETSc-FEM for a complete conjugated heat transfer approach.…”