Mechanical properties prediction in high-precision foundry production

Mechanical properties are the attributes of a metal to withstand several forces and tensions. Specifically, ultimate tensile strength is the force a material can resist until it breaks. The only way to examine this mechanical property is the employment of destructive inspections that renders the casting invalid with the subsequent cost increment. In a previous work we showed that modelling the foundry process as a probabilistic constellation of interrelated variables allows Bayesian networks to infer causal relationships. In other words, they may guess the value of a variable (for instance, the value of ultimate tensile strength). Against this background, we present here the first ultimate tensile strength prediction system that, upon the basis of a Bayesian network, is able to foresee the values of this property in order to correct it before the casting is made. Further, we have tested the accuracy and error rate of the system with data of a real foundry.