Investigation of the functional characteristics of injection molds with conformal cooling channels

Injection molding is a widely used process for manufacturing thermoplastic parts, in which a mold cavity is filled with hot polymer melt. After mold filling, the cooling process is conducted, followed by circulating coolant through cooling channels, which are usually designed as straight shapes. In this study, three conformal cooling channels were designed for a cover part and analyzed numerically to compare their cooling performance with that of a conventional straight channel. Deformation analyses were performed to evaluate the dimensional stability of the molded part, owing to the temperature uniformity of the conformal cooling channels. In addition, structural and fatigue analyses were performed, by connected with injection molding simulation, to evaluate the durability of the mold cores with various cooling channel types. The optimal design of the conformal cooling channel was then determined by considering these three simulation results synthetically.