During an injection molding cycle, the mold temperatures, especially those in contact with the part, will heat up and cool down slightly around the average temperature. Typically, a mold will be hotter during the filling stage, and cooler during the pressurization and cooling stages. The Transient cool analyses enable you to see how the mold temperature varies with time.
When a 3D transient cool analysis is performed, the Cool (FEM) solver obtains a full three-dimensional transient finite-element solution for the temperatures of the part. This solution is used for the calculation of the heat flux into the mold.
- Cool (FEM)
- The heat fluxes from the part are used as boundary conditions for the transient finite-element solution that calculates the temperature through the depth of the mold. This provides the temperature at every node through the mold, and enables you to optimize the placement, quantity and operating conditions of cooling channels in the mold.
Note: To run a Cool (FEM) analysis, it is necessary to model a mold. This can be accomplished in a third party CAD program and imported, or it can be modeled using the Mold Surface Wizard.
Cool (FEM) analyses are supported by Dual Domain and 3D mesh types. Dual Domain analyses use the conduction solver to calculate the temperature distribution in the part. There are two solvers to choose from for 3D mesh types:
-
Conduction solver
- this is a fast solver, that only considers heat conduction. This solver provides a similar result to Cool (BEM), in a shorter timeframe.
-
Flow solver
- this solver solves the entire flow solution in the part, passes the data across for calculation of the mold temperature distribution, the takes the temperature information from the mold and recalculates the entire flow solution in the part. This process is reiterated many times over, until the results converge. This solver is slower than either the conduction solver, or Cool (BEM), but the results can be used to capture shear heating effects from flow, that are caused by heat fluxes from the part into the mold.
Note: When switching between the Cool and the Cool (FEM) solvers, the mold mesh will be deleted and you will have to regenerate it each time.