Study on Three-Dimensional Thermal Deformation of Aluminum Casting Tire Mold by Numerical Analysis and Experiment

Abstract

This paper investigates on three-dimensional thermal deformation of aluminum casting tire mold applying metal casting method by numerical analysis and experiment. In this study, the numerical analysis was performed based on finite element method (FEM) in order to predict thermal deformation in tread part of tire mold by completely cooling about 50°C. For the numerical analysis, “COMSOL Multiphysics 3.3 Ver.” a commercial program for heat transfer and thermal-structural analysis, was used. In order to verify the results calculated by the numerical analysis, the experiment was carried out applying metal casting method on the same condition of numerical analysis. For the experiment, the temperature profile inside the aluminum casting tire mold was measured using thermocouples by completely cooling. When the temperature profile calculated by the numerical analysis and measured by the experiment were compared with each other, it appeared that was a slight temperature difference between the two results by latent heat of aluminum alloy, but their cooling patterns were almost similar.