Application of particle method to the casting process simulation

Casting processes involve many significant phenomena such as fluid flow, solidification, and deformation, and it is known that casting defects are strongly influenced by the phenomena. However the phenomena complexly interacts each other and it is difficult to observe them directly because the temperature of the melt and other apparatus components are quite high, and they are generally opaque; therefore, a computer simulation is expected to serve a lot of benefits to consider what happens in the processes. Recently, a particle method, which is one of fully Lagrangian methods, has attracted considerable attention. The particle methods based on Lagrangian methods involving no calculation lattice have been developed rapidly because of their applicability to multi-physics problems. In this study, we combined the fluid flow, heat transfer and solidification simulation programs, and tried to simulate various casting processes such as continuous casting, centrifugal casting and ingot making. As a result of continuous casting simulation, the powder flow could be calculated as well as the melt flow, and the subsequent shape of interface between the melt and the powder was calculated. In the centrifugal casting simulation, the mold was smoothly modeled along the shape of the real mold, and the fluid flow and the rotating mold are simulated directly. As a result, the flow of the melt dragged by the rotating mold was calculated well. The eccentric rotation and the influence of Coriolis force were also reproduced directly and naturally. For ingot making simulation, a shrinkage formation behavior was calculated and the shape of the shrinkage agreed well with the experimental result.