Optimum cooling system design of a free-form injection mold using an abductive network

This study uses the cooling system as the major control parameter to achieve an optimal design for a simulated injection-mold model. In this investigation. once the cooling system parameters, i.e. cooling channel diameters, cooling channel spacing and cooling line equations, are given, the product performance (warpage) can be predicted accurately by the developed abductive network model. To begin, the injection-mold part-line of the parameter equation is formulated by the abductive network method to limit the number of parameters in the cooling system. The optimal cooling system parameters can then be reached through a simulated annealing (SA) optimization algorithm with a performance index to obtain perfect parts. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.