Minimising the Casting Defect Using Casting Simulation - A Case Study of an Industrial Casting

摘要

Casting is important for engineering application and it is the backbone of automobile and other engineering sectors. It is utmost important to have the quality casting with minimum weight, soundness and good surface finish. Reduction in a small percentage rejection, can save lot of energy in a foundry and can make it competitive in the global market, Still many foundries use the approach of trial and error method in shop-floor to reduce the casting defect by wasting lot of time and energy and still not able to achieve that level of casting yield and soundness. A casting design and simulation approach was taken to minimise the defect in an industrial casting by controlling the thermal gradient, pouring temperature and modification in gating design. It was found that hot spot observed in bracket area of casting where shrinkage was leading. By analysing the shop-floor data it was found that the die temperature was slightly lesser than the desired value, The simulation results were compared with the industrial results to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed thermal and fluid flow simulation approach, It was found that a good agreement exists between the two sets of results. Various experiments were done by increasing the metal temperature and die temperature to get the proper range of die and metal temperature on which die will work properly and sound casting will come out. This concept was implemented in reality and the rejection rate was reduced from more than 13% to approximately 3,0%.