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PROCESS ANALYSIS,COMPUTER MODELLING,AND PRODUCTION DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-PRESSURE DIE CASTING

Objective

High pressure die casting is an extremely important industrial operation for the SME sector of the market, there being an estimated 5000 casting machines in use in Europe. However, there is a little fundamental understanding of the process and cast metal quality, particularly from cold chamber machines, is the worst of all commercial casting processes. In order to improve both, the quality of die cast products and the efficiency of the die casting process, a four-fold attack on the problems of high pressure die casting has been mounted.
High pressure die casting is an extremely important industrial operation for the small and medium sized enterprise (SME) sector of the market. In order to improve both the quality of die cast products and the efficiency of the die casting process, some problems of high pressure die casting are being investigated.

Computer simulation: based on the existing MAGMASOFT package for heat and fluid flow simulation a multiphase flow software is being developed in order to optimise the metal flow in the runner and gating system in the die cavity. To date a turbulence flow model has been developed and integrated. For the optimisation of the thermal balance of the die the software will simulate the batch production characteristics of the process. A dedicated module has been developed which takes into account all the heat losses during spraying of water soluble lubricants. The calculated results are validated by detailed microstructural analysis of the die castings produced from dies of variable geometry. Excellent agreement is achieved especially for calculated and experimentally determined cooling rates.

Full internal and external monitoring of the die cavity supplies pressure and temperature profiles for validation of the software.
Computer simulation : based on the existing MAGMASOFT package for heat and fluid flow simulation a multiphase flow software is developed in order to optimize the metal flow in the runner and gating system in the die cavity. To date a turbulence flow model has been developed and integrated. For the optimization of the thermal balance of the die the software simulates the batch production characteristics of the process. A dedicated module has been developed which takes into account all the heat losses during spraying of water soluble lubricants. The calculated results are validated by detailed microstructural analysis of the die castings produced from dies of variable geometry. Excellent agreement is achieved especially for calculated and experimentally determined cooling rates.

Full internal and external monitoring of the cavity supplies pressure and temperature profiles for validation of the software.

Technology transfer of squeeze casting to high-pressure die casting will take place to reduce porosity levels in high pressure die castings.

Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

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Funding Scheme

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Coordinator

Magma Gießereitechnologie Gesellschaft für Gießerei-, Simulations- und Regeltechnik mbH
EU contribution
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Address
Werner-Heisenberg-Straße 14
52477 Alsdorf
Germany

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