Effectiveness of Conformal Cooling for a V-Shaped Plate and its Influence on Warpage

Traditional cooling fails to fit the geometric outline of a product, thus limiting its cooling effect. Conformal cooling, on the contrary, generates an even cooling effect and demonstrates its advantages concerning complex models. A 3D metal printing technique was employed in the current study to make the mold core. The current study, combining the results from the CAE simulation and the real experiment, aimed to compare the cooling efficiency between baffles cooling and conformal cooling. It has demonstrated that conformal cooling has higher cooling efficiency. Residual stresses were measured by the photoelasticity instrument, the results revealed that conformal cooling residual stresses was lower than baffles cooling. In terms of cooling time, conformal cooling required 24 seconds, which 19.7% less than the baffles cooling one of 30 seconds.