AbstractThe pressure die casting involves die designs incorporating cooling channels positioned to facilitate the controlled extraction of energy from a solidifying casting. It is now known that subcooled nucleate boiling can occur in cooling channels and this paper is concerned with novel cooling channel shapes that are optimized to promote and enhance this boiling and thus reduce casting times. Shape sensitivity analysis is applied to a boundary element model using the material derivative adjoint variable technique. Mesh node positions on the cooling channels are used as the design parameters. The sensitivities are used in a conjugate gradient non‐linear optimization routine. It is shown that with this approach cooling channels can be designed to maximize boiling heat transfer whilst at the same time allow some degree of control of spatial temperature variation over the die cavity surface. Simulation and experimental results are presented for a traditional die and an optimized die. A 60 per cent reduction in cycle time is achieved with the optimized die. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.