Heat transfer analysis of conventional and conformal cooling channel in injection mold

Injection Molding (IM) serves as a foundational manufacturing process within the plastic industry, where cooling efficiency plays a decisive role in determining product quality, production throughput, and cost-effectiveness. This study addresses the intricate challenge of optimizing heat transfer and advancing the design of Conformal Cooling Channels (CCCs) to enhance the cooling phase of IM. A novel methodology is proposed, integrating the Stacked Layer Tanh Swish Beta-based Deep Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (SLTSB-DBi-LSTM) model to achieve precise temperature prediction with an accuracy of 99.40%. This model is further complemented by the development of heat maps and Voronoi diagrams, which facilitate the geometrical optimization of CCC by minimizing overlaps and ensuring uniform channel spacing. Additionally, the Migrated Gannet Optimization (MGO) algorithm refines temperature control and channel design, resulting in enhanced thermal regulation across diverse IM scenarios. Experimental validation demonstrated a substantial reduction in cooling time to 5.78 s for CCC, significantly outperforming conventional designs. The proposed approach also achieved notable improvements in yield strength and product quality by optimizing both thermal and mechanical parameters. These findings substantiate the efficacy of the proposed methodology in addressing longstanding challenges in IM cooling efficiency. The study offers transformative implications for high-precision manufacturing sectors, including automotive, consumer electronics, and plastic packaging, presenting a robust framework for advancing efficiency, sustainability, and innovation in industrial manufacturing practices.