Enhanced Cooling Channel Performance in Injection Molds

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Advancements in light emitting diode (LED) technology have created new opportunities for automotive manufacturers to use LEDsin vehicle head and tail lights. Thicker plastic lenses and complex profiles are required to optimize the optical characteristics ofLED lights. Plastic thickness is a concern for mass production because of the increased amount of heat that must be removedfrom the molten plastic before it leaves the mold. The cooling time for a plastic part that is 4-6 times thicker than normal can be upto 10 times longer than the traditional thinner part. The increased costs inherent with longer cycles currently make thick wallinjection molded parts cost prohibitive for mass production.Cycle times can be reduced by optimizing the cooling passages within the molds. The current practice is to drill a network ofinterconnected straight cooling lines that do not conform to the complex surface profiles of todays automotive styles. Thisprevents implementation of a conformal cooling strategy that consistently positions cooling lines along the complex profiles of themold to optimize the heat transfer.The research will initially investigate the heat transfer and fluid flow in straight and conformal cooling inserts throughComputational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Heat Transfer simulations and analysis. Simulations will then be used to optimize thedesign of cooling passages to extract maximum heat from the surrounding material. Finally, multiphysics models will be developedto more accurately predict the thermal characteristics of the complete injection molding system.