Design and Calibration of Coupled Heat and Fluid Flow within an End-Chilled Plate Casting during Filling

A benchmark casting process was designed to provide valuable insight to casting designers. The end-chilled benchmark casting process, referred to as the ECBCP, was designed to expand thermophysical property databases. The geometry of the plate within the EC-BCP was determined to experience a range of cooling rates that are typically seen in complex, aluminum alloy aerospace castings. A digital twin of the EC-BCP enables prediction of as-cast microstructure and casting quality; quantitative quality criteria relates the predicted thermal, flow, and solidification profiles to the microstructure. A commercially available casting simulation software, ProCast, was used to predict thermal, flow, and solidification profiles for the EC-BCP. ProCast was also used to design and calibrate coupled heat and fluid flow within the EC-BCP during filling. These results were compared against experimental thermal measurements, collected via thermocouples in the molten aluminum alloy, mold sand, and copper chill. This investigation focuses specifically on evaluating ProCast’s ability to predict coupled heat and fluid flow throughout the casting process. Sensitivity analysis was performed on major process variables within the experiment and computation. Adjustments were made to the simulation parameters to improve the software’s prediction capabilities. And finally, a semi-transparent EC-BCP mold was produced to visualize fluid flow. The gating system design criteria were verified, and fluid flow was compared to the predictions.