Evolutionary algorithm for gate location optimization of plastic injection molding

The injection molding is widely applied to make plastic products with complex shape,high precision and low cost.The placement of a gate in an injection mold is one of the most important issues in the total mold design.The quality of the molded part is greatly affected by the gate location,because it influences the manner in which the plastic flows into the mold cavity.Therefore,ultimate product quality can be greatly improved by optimizing gate location.In this paper,a gate location optimization method was developed based on minimization of the mold filling pressure,overpacking,friction heat,and temperature difference during the mold filling process.An information entropy-based multi-population evolutionary algorithm in conjunction with simulation programs was used to search the optimal gate location.The examples indicate that this method can be used effectively to obtain the optimal gate location for single-gate mold.