Optimal cooling system design for the injection molding process

Abstract

A computer-aided optimal design system was developed to improve the performance of a cooling system for injection molding. This was done by minimizing a weighted combination of the uniformity of the part temperature and the cooling time. The CONMIN algorithm was adopted to obtain the optimal design using the special boundary integral formulation and a corresponding design sensitivity analysis formulation. Design variables related to the processing conditions (i.e,, inlet coolant temperature and volumetric flow rate of each cooling channel) and mold cooling system design (radius and location of each cooling channel) were considered. Three different optimization strategies are suggested, and three sample problems were solved to demonstrate the efficiency and the usefulness of this optimization procedure.