Research On Numerical Simulation And Optimization Design Of The Cooling Process For Plastic Profiles Within Calibrator

Plastic profile is a kind of new plastic products that has been developed during 1950's. It is obtained by extrusion with irregulated section and used widely. It is applied to manufacture windows and doors typically. Extrusion is one of the main methods of plastic product and extrusion die is the important equipment to manufacture plastic profile. The calibrator plays a very important role in the extrusion process and directly relates to the dimension precision, cooling velocity and surface quality of the plastic profile. So the design of the cooling system in calibrator is very important.So far, the cooling system in calibrator is designed by experience. It is difficult to test the effect of different cooling system on cooling time of profile by experimentation. The heat transfer theory is used in the paper to analyze the heat transfer process during profile cooling in calibrator, and it is made properly supposition and simplification to establish heat transfer mathematic model, and the initial and boundary conditions of numerical simulation are calculated. The numerical simulation of profile cooling process in calibrator is finished by ANSYS software and the distribution of transient temperature field during profile cooling is obtained. Based on the numerical simulation results, the optimization design program of cooling system in calibrator is written by using APDL parameter design language in ANSYS, and the optimization design of cooling system is finished, and the correctness of the optimization design is validated. Moreover, the numerical simulation of co-extrusion plastic profile cooling is done and the hot inner stress of profile during cooling time is analyzed by ANSYS coupling module, the results can guide the cavity design in calibrator.In the paper, the numerical simulation method is used to study on the cooling process of plastic profile in calibrator and the results can guide the design of the cooling channels and calibrator cavity, which can improve the design efficiency and quality of calibrator evidently.