Metal Casting Solidification Simulation Technology

Casting solidification is actually the transformation of liquid phase to solid phase with the liberation of latent heat of fusion. During this metallurgical process, it induces casting defects like shrinkage, porosity and hot tears. To reduce or eliminate these problems, accurate and appropriate casting design gating system is necessary. This can be predicted and designed by means of computer simulation of casting solidification. This article discusses the simulation process of casting solidification which will help the foundry engineers and industrial metallurgists to optimize the design parameters, better understand the temperature history of the solidifying casting and hence to identify the hot spot region with the aid of time-temperature contours. These results will be used to get defect free cast products on implementing the above findings obtained from the simulation process. In this paper, the importance of heat transfer in the simulation process is presented in a precise manner.