Investigation of transient numerical simulation of solidification and thermal behavior of metal molds with conformal cooling channels

Abstract

The cooling process in metal molds is one of the important factors in the solidification process of molten metal. Molding defects such as hot spot defects and warping occur in cast products when the cooling is not uniform. However, qualified and faster cooling affects product quality positively. Molding is one of the important processes both in terms of cycle time and product quality, with permanent mold casting, high quality liquid metal casting, and quality product. Selective Laser Melting (SLM) method has been used to design metal mold cores with unique cooling channels to be compactly produced. The effects of the designed cooling channels, heat transfer and solidification of the molten metal are studied in transient numerical terms. The temperature distributions for 1, 3 and 5 seconds after casting were obtained and the solidification processes were investigated according to the standard cooling channels of the original cooling channels. According to the results obtained, it has been observed that solidification is better in originally designed cooling channels.