Mold cooling simulation of the pressing process in TV panel production

Cooling system design in the TV panel pressing operation is of great importance because it significantly affects productivity and the quality of the final part. It would thus be very helpful for mold designers to be able to use a computer aided design tool in determining locations and dimensions of cooling system and process conditions to achieve rapid, uniform and even cooling. For this, a computer simulation has been developed for three-dimensional mold heat transfer of the TV panel pressing process. In the simulation, mold heat transfer is considered as cyclic-steady, three-dimensional conduction; heat transfer within the glass melt region is treated as transient, one-dimensional conduction; heat exchange between the cooling system surface and coolant is treated as steady, as is heat exchange with the ambient air and mold exterior surface. Numerical implementation includes the application of a hybrid scheme consisting of a three-dimensional, boundary element method for the mold region and a finite-difference method with a variable mesh for the melt region. These two analyses are iteratively coupled so as to match the temperature and heat flux at the mold-melt interface. As compared with the experimental data, the numerical simulation developed here is computationally efficient and sufficiently accurate. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.