• Journal of computational fluids engineering
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.53-57
• /
• 2012

Design of the cooling channels of a plastic injection mold affects the quality and the productivity of the injection processes. In the injection process, the melted resin with high temperature enters the mold cavity, and just after the cavity is filled the heat should be dissipated through the cooling channels simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to analyse the heat transfer phenomenon and to estimate the temperature distribution in the mold to evaluate the cooling effect of the channels. The injection mold is assumed to have cooling channels of circular cross section and each channel has the same coolant flow rate. and The cavity has a rectangular shape. The results show that as the cooling channels get closer to the cavity surface, the cooling efficiency increases as might easily be guessed. However, due to the final hot resin flow from the gate an intensive cooling is required in that region.

• Design & Manufacturing
• /
• v.1 no.1
• /
• pp.27-32
• /
• 2007

In the optical application demand for high quality lens is increasing. Plastics lenses are demanded more than glass lenses for large size lenses as well as micro-size lenses. It is difficult to apply typical straight cooling channels of injection mold to lens molding due to its non-uniform temperature distribution. In this study, we manufactured molds for plastic lenses with the conventional cooling channels and conformal cooling channels produced by the DMLS process. We evaluated cooling performance for the 2 molds by injection molding experiment. Also, uniformity of the temperature distribution was tested by infrared camera and temperature monitoring. We confirmed that the cooling performance and temperature uniformity with the conformal cooling channels is much improved from the ones with the conventional. The cooling time with the conformal cooling channels was reduced 30% compared with the conventional cooling channels.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.29 no.8
• /
• pp.824-833
• /
• 2012

The shrinkage and the warpage of the moulded part are influenced by the design of the product and injection mould. In a flat part with a partly thick volume, the warpage of the flat part is created from the difference of the shrinkage between thin and thick regions. The warpage of the flat part with a partly thick volume can be reduced by a proper design of the cooling system in the injection mould. The goal of this paper is to design properly cooling channels of injection mould to manufacture a flat part with a partly thick volume. The conformal cooling channel is adopted to improve cooling characteristics of a region with the thick volume. The linear cooling channels are assigned to the other region. The proper design of the conformal cooling channels is obtained from three-dimensional injection molding analysis for various design alternatives. The moulding characteristics of the designed mould with both conformal and linear cooling channels are compared to those of the mould with linear cooling channels from viewpoints of temperature, shrinkage and warpage of the moulded part using numerical analysis. Injection mould with both conformal and linear cooling channels for the flat part with a partially thick volume is fabricated. In addition, injection moulding experiments are performed using the fabricated mould. From the results of the injection moulding experiments, it has been shown that the designed mould can successfully fabricate the flat part with a partially thick volume.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.34 no.10
• /
• pp.1487-1492
• /
• 2010

The objective of this study is to design the conformal cooling channels for the mould of a plastic drawer of a refrigerator by analysis of three-dimensional injection molding. In order to obtain the desired design of the conformal cooling channels, the influence of the diameter and the position of the conformal cooling channels on the moulding characteristics and the product qualities were quantitatively examined. From the results of the examination, an optimal design of the conformal cooling channels, which ensures uniform cooling and minimum potential deformation of the molded drawers, was estimated. By comparing the designed mould and a conventional mould with linear cooling channels from the viewpoints of the product qualities as well as cooling and cycle times, it was shown that the mould with conformal cooling channels can simultaneously improve the productivity of the injection moulding process and the product qualities.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.93-98
• /
• 2012

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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
• /
• 2007.05a
• /
• pp.187-190
• /
• 2007

The objective of this paper is to investigate into the development of injection mould with high cooling characteristics using a direct metal RP technology. In order to manufacture the injection mould with a high cooling rate, three-dimensional conformal cooling channels have been generated in the mould. DMT process, which is one of direct metal RP technologies, has been utilized to directly manufacture the metallic mould with three-dimensional conformal cooling channels. In order to examine the performance of the designed mould, injection molding tests have been carried out. The results of the experiments have been shown that a cooling time and the injection time of the proposed mould are reduced by the factor of five and two times in comparison with the injection mould with linear cooling channels.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2007.05b
• /
• pp.2426-2431
• /
• 2007

The microchannel waterblock has a good capability in the cooling of electronic devices. The object of this paper is to estiblish the scheme of design for the microchannel waterblock. The effects of flow rate and channel size on the cooling performances are investigated. It was found that the optimum flow rates were ragned from 0.7 lpm to 1.4 lpm. The thermal resistance at 2.0 lpm and 100 W was 0.13 $^{\circ}C$/W. Decrease in the width of channels is more effective for the improvement in the cooling performances of microchannel waterblock than increase in the height of channels. The increase of pressure drop resulted from decrease in the width of channels can be decreased by increasing the hight of channels.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2009.06a
• /
• pp.373-373
• /
• 2009

Relative humidity, membrane conductivity and water activity are critical parameters of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) for high performance and reliability. These parameters are closely related with temperature. Moreover, the ideal values of these parameters are not always identical along the channels. Therefore, the cooling channel design and its operating condition should be well optimized along the all location of the channels. In the present study, we have performed a numerical investigation on the effects of cooling channels on performance of a PEMFC. Three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations are solved with the energy equation including heat generated by the electrochemical reactions in the fuel cell. The present numerical model includes the gas diffusion layers (GDL) and serpentine channels for both anode and cathode gas flows, as well as cooling channels. To accurately predict the water transport across the membrane, the distribution of water content in the membrane is calculated by solving a nonlinear differential equation with a nonlinear coefficient, i.e., the water diffusivity which is a function of water content as well as temperature. Main emphasis is placed on the heat transfer between the solid bipolar plate and coolant flow. The present results show that local current density is affected by cooling channels due to the change of the oxygen concentration and the membrane conductivity as well as the water content. It is also found that the relative humidity is influenced by the generated water and the gas temperature and thus it affects the distribution of fuel concentration and the conductivity of the membrane, ultimately fuel cell performance. Unit-cell experiments are also carried out to validate the numerical models. The performance curves between the models and experiments show reasonable results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.35 no.12
• /
• pp.1647-1653
• /
• 2011

The cycle time in injection moulding greatly depends on the cooling time of the plastic part that is controlled by cooling channels. Cooling channels are required to facilitate the heat transfer rate from the die to the coolant without reducing the strength of the die. Employing layered manufacturing techniques (LMT), a die embedding conformal cooling channels can be fabricated directly while conventional cooling channels are usually made of straight drilled hole. Meanwhile, H13 tool steel is widely used as the die material because of its high thermal resistance and dimensional stability. However, H13 with a low thermal conductivity is not efficient for certain part geometries. In this context, the use of functionally graded materials (FGMs) between H13 and copper may circumvent a tradeoff between the strength and the heat transfer rate. This paper presents a method for modeling of conformal cooling channels made of FGMs.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2008.05a
• /
• pp.154-156
• /
• 2008

A prototype of the desiccant cooling system with a regenerative evaporative cooler was built and tested for the performance evaluation. The regenerative evaporative cooler is to cool a stream of air using evaporative cooling effect without an inc6rease in the humidity ratio. It is comprised of multiple pairs of dry and wet channels and the evaporation water is supplied only to the wet channels. By redirecting a portion of the air flown out of the dry channel into the wet channel, the air can be cooled down to a temperature lower than its inlet wet-bulb temperature at the outlet end of the dry channels. Incorporating a regenerative evaporative cooler eliminates the need for deep dehumidification in the desiccant rotor that is necessary to achieve low air temperature in the system with a direct evaporative cooler. Subsequently, the regenerative evaporative cooler enables the use of low temperature heat source to regenerate the dehumidifier permitting the desiccant cooling system more beneficial compared with other thermal driven air conditioners. At the ARI condition with the regeneration temperature of $60^{\circ}C$, the prototype showed the cooling capacity of 4.4 kW and COP of 0.75.