Thermal-fluid coupled analysis for injection molding process by considering thermal contact resistance

Injection molds are generally fabricated by assembling a number of plates in which the core and cavity components are assembled. This assembled structure has a number of contact interfaces where the heat transfer characteristics are affected by thermal contact resistance. In previous studies, numerical approaches were investigated to predict the effect of thermal contact resistance on the temperature distribution of injection molds. In this study, thermal-fluid coupled numerical analyses are performed to take into account the thermal contact effect on the numerical evaluation of the mold filling characteristics. Comparisons with experimental results show that the proposed coupled analysis provides more reliable results than the conventional analyses in predicting the mold filling characteristics by taking into account the effect of thermal contact resistance inside the injection mold assembly.