Numerical investigation on thermal response of oil-heated tool for manufacture of composite products

In this paper, the thermal response of an oil-heated tool is studied using a commercial FEM package ABAQUS and the numerical results for laminar flows and fully turbulent flows in the oil are presented. The study is focused on the influence of the oil flow rates on the oil temperature distributions along the oil flow path and the thermal responses of the tool surface. It was determined that the higher a flow rate was, the shorter a transient heat transfer process took. Consequently, it is concluded that the heating process of an oil-heated tool can be controlled by the control of the thermal oil flow rates. Furthermore, since the oil-heated tool can also be used to cool the composite products by circulating cold oil through the tool, instead of hot oil, the cooling processes were also simulated. The results confirm that cooling can be similarly controlled by flow rates.