Temperature Field Optimization on the Mould Surface

Abstract

This article focuses on issues of uniform heating of the shell metal moulds. Infrared heaters located above the aluminium mould surface heat the mould. This is one of the economical ways of artificial leathers production in the automotive industry (e.g. the artificial leathers for car interiors). The described mathematical model allows us to specify the locations of infrared heaters over the mould to obtain approximately a uniform temperature field on the mould surface. In this way we can obtain a uniform material structure and colour shade of the artificial leather and thereby prevent the scrap production. We used a differential evolution algorithm during the optimization process. The optimization procedure was programmed in the Matlab development environment. The software package ANSYS was used for temperature calculations. A practical example of optimization of heaters locations over the mould and calculation of the temperature across the mould surface is included at the end of the article.