Application of conformal cooling to reduce cooling time and warpage of a U-shaped plate

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 this study to make the mold core within conformal cooling channels. This study, combining the results from the CAE simulation and the real experiments, 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. It also helps to reduce final warpage by the conformal cooling.