CFD study of transient heating and cooling of a blank mould with a conformal cooling channel for manufacturing glass containers

Narrow Neck Press and Blow is a glass moulding process that produces a lightweight container by pressing the glass in the blank mould, baffle, and neck ring to form a parison. This paper presents a cyclic transient computational fluid dynamics study to evaluate the thermal performance of a novel blank mould (ShellMould) for the glass industry. ShellMould consists of two cast iron parts, an outer shell and a moulding core, and a conformal cooling channel between these parts. Fins placed strategically inside the conformal channel promote heat transfer between the cooling airflow and the blank. A mould with straight cooling channels currently used by the glass industry was considered as the reference case model. The mould thermal performance was assessed based on three parameters: an Index of Temperature Heterogeneity, the heat removal rate, and the average temperature in the moulding surface at the blank, baffle seal, and neck ring. It is shown that ShellMould can reduce the operating temperature by 100 degrees C and improve the heat removal rate by 190 up to 202 [W]. Results reveal the main challenges for improving the ShellMould cooling and temperature homogeneity, mainly in the neck ring, where the cooling efficiency dropped by 10%.