Numerical modeling of mechanical and thermal behaviors of cellular structures produced by SLM

Abstract

The plastic injection molding industries is nowadays one of the strongest Portuguese industries and internationally known for their good quality products. Currently an injection mold is a solid, which is heavy and expensive to produce structure due to the use of conventional subtraction material processes. The need to produce more parts with high quality in a short period of time and at a lower cost requires the continuous development on geometries, materials and manufacturing processes of injection molds. The optimization of mold cooling processing can undoubtedly lead to a reduction of the effective total time of the injection process, enabling a shorter manufacturing time, which leads to a reduction of production costs. Combining the requirements of injection mold production with the advantages of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) emerges as a quicker and sustainable alternative to the construction of these structures. In this work two types of cellular internal topologies - hexagonal and cub-octahedral – to be manufacturing by SLM were generated and their mechanical and thermal behaviors numerically evaluated through compression and thermal analyses. Numerical simulation results demonstrated that the hexagonal cellular internal topology provides a higher mechanical strength when compared to the cub-octahedral cellular structure while the thermal analysis shows that cub-octahedral topology is more efficient for heat dissipation.The plastic injection molding industries is nowadays one of the strongest Portuguese industries and internationally known for their good quality products. Currently an injection mold is a solid, which is heavy and expensive to produce structure due to the use of conventional subtraction material processes. The need to produce more parts with high quality in a short period of time and at a lower cost requires the continuous development on geometries, materials and manufacturing processes of injection molds. The optimization of mold cooling processing can undoubtedly lead to a reduction of the effective total time of the injection process, enabling a shorter manufacturing time, which leads to a reduction of production costs. Combining the requirements of injection mold production with the advantages of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) emerges as a quicker and sustainable alternative to the construction of these structures. In this work two types of cellular interna...