Abstract
The injection molding process is suitable for manufacturing complicated plastic products. As the customer request higher quality products increase, realization of the precise dimensional and shape controls is getting more important. For this purpose it is important to obtain uniform cooling procedure over the whole surface of the high temperature molded plastic. Failure to this may lead to different shrinkage speed, internal stresses and unwanted shape deformations. It is necessary to distribute coolant flow rates to the main channel and to the sub-channels properly to insure uniform cooling process when there are parallel cooling channels. In this study, three-dimensional turbulent flow simulations for representative parallel cooling channels were performed. To insure the intended flow rate to each sub-channels, various shape designs for the channel system were investigated. The results show that as the Reynolds number increases the effect of shape design is more profound. Through the proper flow distribution, uniform cooling effects would be expected.
