High pressure Die Casting is a complex field of foundry. The liquid hot metal is generally poured into a shot sleeve for few seconds, until the desired volume is reached. Then, after a short waiting time, the plunger pushes the metal into the die cavity. First a slow shot phase is performed to avoid air entrainment in the sleeve, then a final high speed phase that fill the casting part in a very short amount of time. One of the targets of any producer is to find the best compromise between a fast process, to increase the productivity and to reduce the heat losses, and a slow filing and shot necessary to minimize the air entrainment. FLOW-3D Cast, due to its capabilities, is one of the best software to analyse this process. It can combine easily moving objects, mass sources, heat transfer and solidification, everything in fast and accurate simulations. Several studies were already done to determine the best plunger velocity curve, also coupling FLOW-3D Cast to numerical optimization software. The aim of the present simulation, instead, is to focus on the sleeve filling, underlining the possibility to control also this phase and the defects that could arise from a not-optimal solution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGQUmH8EHZ0 In the video both fluid and walls are coloured by temperature, with two different colour scales. The heat transfer coefficients have been artificially increased to emphasize the temperature change. Thanks to this fact, it is possible to notice that some drops of metal flow on the beginning of the runner system, solidifying and influencing the casting phase until they are melted again. It is possible also to notice the big waves generated when the filling is finished, and how this waves contribute to entrain some big air bubbles that are pushed into the casting part, generating defects. … [Read more...]
Investigation of Mould Leakages in a Gravity Casting
This article was contributed by Gabriele Taricco of CM Taricco and Stefano Mascetti of XC Engineering. Mould design is a very complex undertaking that must consider not only fluid dynamics and metal solidification patterns, but problems that may arise from the mould itself and how it reacts to stresses from heat transfer. CM Taricco, a mould maker company based in Italy, recently encountered a problem of metal leakages at the bottom of one of their new moulds. The cause of the mould leakages was initially obscure and only appeared after a few process cycles. It was evident that the problem was critical, since it would compromise the production timeline and dramatically increase the costs to cast the part. Investigation of an idea The process itself was a gravity casting, with well-controlled pouring dynamics and overflow designs, so the problem could not come from the fluid dynamics part. The hypothesis of Gabriele Taricco (owner of CM Taricco) was that the metal leakages were resulting from a bad design of the thermal dissipation of the mould, causing a non-uniform distribution of temperature and hence large and unwanted deformations at the bottom of the mould, that were enforced cycle after cycle up to the opening of a critical area where metal could flows out. To verify this and to find a quick solution to the problem, a FLOW-3D simulation was run to exactly visualize what was happening to the mould as it was being heated. The analysis After a filling simulation, to ensure a good filling pattern, the focus of the simulation was redirected to a thermal die cycling analysis. The setup in this case is fast and straightforward requiring only 1 hour to reproduce 10 production cycles on a common desktop machine (i7 5930K, commercial value 1500 dollars). The result confirmed CM’s initial hypothesis: by looking at the temperature field, from various points of view and cross sections in a single image using FlowSight, it was clear that the temperature distribution of the mould would easily cause the expected deformations and metal leakages. Simulation of the mould’s temperature during the die cyclings Further analysis with the Fluid-Structure Interaction module Once the problem was identified and the technical staff could start designing an improved mould, CM Taricco wanted to have a final confirmation running a FEM analysis of stresses and deformations on the die. To perform this analysis, XC Engineering Srl helped CM in setting up and performing the calculation. The result of the analysis showed exactly what CM thought was happening: FLOW-3D was able to reproduce with extreme accuracy the same location and size of the real deformations found on the mould after few pouring cycles. This was good news for CM, and enforces an additional recommendation to use the FSI module at the design stage to predict the real die deformations based on the real casting conditions. Deformation of the mould during the die cyclings, simulated using the Fluid Structure Interaction model. Deformations are amplified x20. Read more... … [Read more...]
Improving High Pressure Die Casting Designs
The content for this article was contributed by Mark Littler of Littler Diecast Corporation. Littler Diecast Corporation, a producer of high pressure die castings, was recently able to redesign and die cast an electrical switch frame for an aerospace application. Formerly produced by a different manufacturer, there were defect problems in a high number of the castings and a new design was needed to achieve a lower scrap rate. Littler Diecast was able to demonstrate that they could pinpoint the defects through simulation without previous knowledge of the problems. This impressed the client enough to land them the job. Identifying the Problem The switch is cast from A380 aluminum and is approximately 1 ¼” x 1” x 1/2” in size. Littler Diecast found that porosity problems were plaguing the part in two locations: the plate and the chimney. This was confirmed by the customer. Holes were forming in each of the locations because of the way the part filled. The flow would enter through a single gate as shown in Figure 1, jet to the far side of the plate and then backfill, trapping air pockets that do not always close due to early solidification. The same problem was found in the chimney: fluid would jet to its furthest extent and then backfill, creating trapped air that could not vent through the parting line. X-ray of original part, showing porosity problemsFigure 1: Original design with a single gate. Plot colored by velocity magnitude.Figure 2: Final design with three gates. Plot colored by velocity magnitude. The Original Part Design There were other problems with the original design of the part. There was a lot of die erosion around the slot for the lock washer and the sealing surfaces on the bottom of the plate. The overflows located at the corners of the part were not large enough to allow defects to flow out. Using FLOW-3D, Littler Diecast was able to analyze the flow behavior and visually determine what was occurring. With such a small part, early solidification is a problem due to the rapid cooling in thin sections. If flow jets across the part and back, the fluid has more time to cool and create entrapped air. It is best to have the hottest liquid coming in last. With this in mind, Littler Diecast was able to test a number of ideas and achieved a design that minimized the potential for problems and maximized the process window. Read more... … [Read more...]
Realizing Da Vinci’s Il Cavallo
In the late 15th century, upon the commission of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, Leonardo Da Vinci spent 17 years devising a plan to cast a 24-ft. tall bronze horse—the largest equestrian statue in the world—in a single pour. The horse, dubbed Il Cavallo, was never completed. After a full-scale clay model and necessary molds were prepared, French troops invaded Milan, forcing Ludovico to use the bronze earmarked for the immense statue to build cannons instead. Tragically, during the conflict, the molds were lost and Gascon archers from the victorious French troops used the massive model for target practice, reducing it to a mound of clay. In the succeeding centuries, many said the horse would never have been successfully cast anyway. Engineering studies asserted that the casting was impossible because the amount of bronze used in the single pour would result in large pockets of gas and possibly, explosions in the melt. Il Cavallo may yet have a happy ending. Using Da Vinci’s extensive notes on the project, the Institute and Museum of the History of Science (IMSS), located in Florence, Italy, where the great master apprenticed, worked with Flow Science’s Italian representative, XC Engineering (Cantu), to study the feasibility of Da Vinci’s design. The results, publicized by the Discovery Channel and other media sites, proved once again the genius of Da Vinci. The most amazing result, apart from the fact that both casting systems developed by Leonardo—vertical and horizontal—could work, is that the pouring of more than 70 tons of bronze would take three to four minutes. This result seems more incredible if we think to another famous casting described by Benvenuto Cellini. A smaller statue, his famous Perseus, seemed to take many hours. – Andrea Bernardoni, Historian at IMSS Replicating the Past Using Da Vinci’s notes on the casting of Il Cavallo, collected in a 34-page handbook, the IMSS and XC Engineering were able to demonstrate that Il Cavallo, often referred to as “the horse that never was,” can be successfully cast as designed. “At that time, engineers and artists were not used to writing down technological notes,” Bernardoni said, “The notes are not a modern technological plan, but they were files written down to help him understand the best way to achieve his goal.” The only numerical information in Da Vinci’s notes was the height of the horse—24 ft. (7.2 m). But the notes also provided drawings of the molds, ovens and casting system, as well as the posture of the horse. Da Vinci also detailed his intention to cast the bronze in a single pour without any steel reinforcement, and to make the two weight-bearing legs solid bronze. The mixture of earth used to make the molds and the furnace-opening sequence to cast the statue vertically in an upside-down position also were described in the notes. Read more... … [Read more...]
Interaction Between Waves and Breakwaters
This article is an adapted version of an article published in the journal of the Engineering Association for Offshore and Marine in Italy by Fabio Dentale, E. Pugliese Carratelli, S.D. Russo, and Stefano Mascetti. The first three authors are users at the University of Salerno; Mr. Mascetti is an engineer at XC Engineering, Flow Science’s associate for Italy and France. The design of breakwaters must be based on the full understanding of the interaction of a complex natural system (the sea and shores) with artificial structures (breakwaters). Typically, design work entails extensive physical modelling, which can be quite expensive and time-consuming. Until recently, the complex aspects of breakwater behavior were considered too challenging for detailed numerical simulations. This is especially the case for breakwaters consisting of rubble mounds composed of blocks of concrete or rocks in which water flows through complex paths with unsteady motion. The gap between numerical and physical, investigations, has narrowed, thanks to the advancement of computing technology. It is now possible to accurately represent a solid structure consisting of individual blocks which interacts with the flow, so as to create a numerical flow domain within the empty spaces between the blocks. This enables the evaluation of the effect of the full hydrodynamic behavior, including convective terms, and the effects of turbulence, which cannot be taken into account with the classical Darcy scheme in which the breakwaters are approximated as homogeneous porous media. Modeling Rubble Mound Breakwaters The following examples describe cases where rubble mound breakwaters are modelled on the basis of their real geometry, taking into account the hydrodynamic interactions with the wave motion. Figure 1: Artificial blocksFigure 2a: Submerged BreakwatersFigures 2b and 2c: Emerged Breakwater – Accropode regular & Accropode irregular The work takes into consideration a schematic representation of a natural stone mound, reproduced as a set of spheres, and was further developed to consider commonly-used artificial blocks such as the cube, the modified cube, the antifer, the tetrapod, the accropode, the accropode II, the coreloc, the xbloc,and the xbloc base (Fig. 1). Breakwaters, both submerged and emerged, were sized by making use of standard empirical formulas as available in the literature and numerically constructed by overlapping individual blocks following real geometric patterns, modelling the structure as in the full size construction and in the physical modelling (Fig. 2). In order to validate the quality of the proposed procedure, three different geometries were considered for the submerged breakwater: solid, porous, solid-porous (Fig. 2a), while for the emerged breakwater, two different geometries were used, according to the shape of the elements: regular and random (Fig. 2b – 2c). Read more... … [Read more...]
