The Woodruff School

SUMMARY

Cooling time in the tooling industry accounts for 50-70% of the cycle time for molded components. It has been determined cooling time can be decreased by 35% with conformal cooling channels and 29% with copper inserts. The rapid development of commercially available hybrid machine tools enables the possibility of manufacturing high precision monolithic, multi-material components, however, processing strategies to produce such components are not well established. This research investigates the use of interleaved conductive material, such as a copper alloy, within a monolithic mold and integrated conformal cooling channels for increased thermal performance of tooling. Enabled by hybrid manufacturing, the integration of additive and subtractive processing allows the manufacture of complex shapes with multi-material structures which are traditionally unmanufacturable with improved surface finish required by tooling applications. While the potential implementation of hybrid DED has been acknowledged to address this need, the manufacturability of a conductive and heat treatable material interface, process planning, and tool path design considerations for varied conformal fluid channel geometries, and bi-material monolithic structure manufacturing for enhanced thermal performance manufacturability is either under-developed or not yet fully understood. To address this knowledge and manufacturability gap, the proposed work will focus on three objectives: (1) determine the correlation between material hardness, tensile strength, and material discontinuities with deposition parameters, (2) determining the coupled manufacturability, structure, and material performance of a conductive material bonded to a heat treatable steel, and (3) investigating process planning strategies for manufacturing geometrically accurate conformal fluid channel geometry. This dissertation will establish a comprehensive understanding of the material, mechanical, and thermal effectiveness of tool performance with interleaved multi-material conformal fluid channels.

SUBJECT:	Ph.D. Proposal Presentation

BY:	Lauren Heinrich

TIME:	Monday, December 5, 2022, 9:00 a.m.

PLACE:	MDF, ORNL, https://tinyurl.com/4rv4vu6s, 325

TITLE:	Impact of Interleaved Thermally Conductive Material with Conformal Fluid Channels on Tooling Thermal Response

COMMITTEE:	Dr. Christopher Saldaña, Chair (ME) Dr. Thomas Kurfess (ME) Dr. Shreyes Melkote (ME) Dr. Eric MacDonald (The University of Texas at El Paso) Dr. Thomas Feldhausen (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

SUMMARY Cooling time in the tooling industry accounts for 50-70% of the cycle time for molded components. It has been determined cooling time can be decreased by 35% with conformal cooling channels and 29% with copper inserts. The rapid development of commercially available hybrid machine tools enables the possibility of manufacturing high precision monolithic, multi-material components, however, processing strategies to produce such components are not well established. This research investigates the use of interleaved conductive material, such as a copper alloy, within a monolithic mold and integrated conformal cooling channels for increased thermal performance of tooling. Enabled by hybrid manufacturing, the integration of additive and subtractive processing allows the manufacture of complex shapes with multi-material structures which are traditionally unmanufacturable with improved surface finish required by tooling applications. While the potential implementation of hybrid DED has been acknowledged to address this need, the manufacturability of a conductive and heat treatable material interface, process planning, and tool path design considerations for varied conformal fluid channel geometries, and bi-material monolithic structure manufacturing for enhanced thermal performance manufacturability is either under-developed or not yet fully understood. To address this knowledge and manufacturability gap, the proposed work will focus on three objectives: (1) determine the correlation between material hardness, tensile strength, and material discontinuities with deposition parameters, (2) determining the coupled manufacturability, structure, and material performance of a conductive material bonded to a heat treatable steel, and (3) investigating process planning strategies for manufacturing geometrically accurate conformal fluid channel geometry. This dissertation will establish a comprehensive understanding of the material, mechanical, and thermal effectiveness of tool performance with interleaved multi-material conformal fluid channels.