Optimal design of heating system for rapid thermal cycling mold using particle swarm optimization and finite element method

Heating efficiency and cavity surface temperature distribution are two key factors for the design of heating system in rapid thermal cycling molding (RTCM) mold. Aiming at high heating efficiency and uniform cavity surface temperature distribution, an optimization method combining particle swarm optimization (PSO) with finite element method (FEM) is proposed to design the heating system for RTCM mold in this work. The proposed optimization design method is applied to design the electric-heating system for an RTCM blow mold of automotive spoiler to verify its effectiveness. The results demonstrate that the method can be used to effectively obtain the optimal design parameters compared with the simulation-based trial and error design method. Based on the optimal results, the RTCM spoiler blow mold with electric heating is constructed. Then, both infrared thermal imaging system and numerical simulation method are used to evaluate the mold thermal response and cavity surface temperature distribution. It is found that the simulated results are in good agreement with the measured ones. The blow molding experiments conducted using the constructed RTCM mold show that the surface quality of molded spoilers is dramatically improved. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.