A method for representation and analysis of conformal cooling channels in molds made of functionally graded tool steel/Cu materials

Advances in additive manufacturing technology (AMT) enable the direct fabrication of thermally conductive molds with heat sinks or conformal cooling channels. Although tool steels (e.g., P21, H13, SUS420J2) are popularly used as die materials because of high dimensional stability, tool steels are inefficient for cooling mold dies due to low thermal conductivity. Hence, the adoption of functionally graded tool steel/Cu materials (FGMs) has good potentials for thermally conductive molds to avoid thermal stress concentration while improving thermal conductivity. In this sense, this paper presents a new method for the representation and analysis of conformal cooling channels in molds (injection or blowing) made of functionally graded tool steel/Cu materials. A heterogeneous sweep operation combined with 2D material blending was proposed to construct heterogeneous solid models for conformal cooling channels. In addition, one-dimensional P21/Cu FGMs were fabricated using DMT (laser-aided direct metal tooling). Material properties (such as density, specific heat, thermal conductivity, coefficient of thermal expansion, and hardness) were evaluated to obtain more accurate analysis results and to verify the feasibility of such a multi-functional mold. An example is shown to illustrate the entire representation and analysis procedure.