Modelling of an industrial die casting process for the production of aluminum automotive parts

Abstract

Die (permanent) casting is one of the major manufacturing processes for aluminum automotive parts thanks to its ability to provide a good balance between mechanical performance and production efficiency. In the die casting industry, computational modelling has been widely adopted to analyze, troubleshoot and optimize die design and process parameters. In this work, a computational modelling methodology including key process boundary conditions and material properties has been developed to simulate an industrial die casting process of an aluminum automotive part. It has been demonstrated that the model is accurate and robust with respect to temperature and defect prediction by comparison with a large amount of high-quality plant-trial data. The data was acquired from an in-house designed data acquisition system (DAQ) connected to an instrumented die and industrial production equipment in a production facility.