Investigation on the establishment and analyses of conformal cooling channel design for blow mold

PET bottle is an excellent packaging material, is widely used in the food & beverage industry which has further given impetus to the market. With an increasing demand for production capability of PET bottle, the rapid cooling efficiency and uniform temperature distribution are important issue on cooling channel design of blow mold. Due to the insufficient cooling time and non-uniform mold temperature distribution that cause bottle stress cracking or broken. In this study, the conformal cooling channel design is developed to achieve a rapid cooling efficiency and uniform temperature distribution of blow mold. The cooling efficiency and temperature distribution during cooling process was measured using infrared thermal image system and thermocouple sensor. Simulation technology was also developed by integration of thermal and fluid flow analysis modules of ANSYS-FLUENT. For cooling efficiency comparison, the shape and size of the conformal cooling channels, fluid temperature and flow rate were varied for both experiments and simulations. The capability and accuracy of simulation on conformal cooling channel design and analysis were verified via experiments. The simulated cooling efficiency and temperature distribution show reasonable agreement with measured results. A reduction in cooling time from the initial 2.9 seconds to 1 second; moreover, conformal cooling channel provides uniform temperature distribution and less temperature difference of 4°C.