Naoya Hirata

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.

Numerical Analysis on the Vortex Pattern and Flux Particle Dispersion in KR Method Using MPS Method

The mechanically-stirring vessel is widely used in many fields, such as chemical reactor, bioreactor, and metallurgy, etc. The type of vortex mode that formed during impeller stirring has great effect on stirring efficiency, chemical reacting rate and air entrapment. Many efforts have been made to numerically simulate the fluid flow in the stirring vessel with classical Eulerian method. However, it is difficult to directly investigate the vortex mode and flux particle dispersion. Therefore, moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) method, which is based on Lagrangian method, is applied to simulate the fluid flow in a KR method in this practice. Top height and bottom heights of vortex surface in a steady state under several rotation speed was taken as key parameters to compare the results of numerical and published results. Flux particle dispersion behaviour under a rotation speed range from 80 to 480 rpm was also compared with the past study. The result shows that the numerical calculation has high consistency with experimental results. It is confirmed that the calculation using MPS method well reflected the vortex mode and flux particle dispersion in a mechanically-stirring vessel.

Development of Generation Technology of High Quality Semi-Solid Slurry by Double-Axis-Electromagnetic Stirrer Combined with Properly Designed Cup

For the semi-solid casting process it is very important to make high quality slurry with high speed and low cost. Recently the double-axis-electromagnetic stirrer is developed as the slurry-making tool. This stirrer has rotating magnetic field (RMF) and linear traveling magnetic field (TMF). This new technology shows several advantages in the quality of slurry. The cup design is also important to make uniform quality slurry. In this paper the new stirrer and its advantages from test report and technology of cup design is introduced.

Development of Aluminum Die Casting Products with High Accuracy as Well as Superior Die-to-Casting Transcriptional Capability by Using Semi-Solid Method

Despite the lightweight demands, precision die casting products with high dimensional/ die-transcriptional accuracy is still made by zinc die-casting, because the conventional aluminum die-casting cannot satisfy the requirement. While light weight precision die casting demand for electric devices /automobile parts has been encouraging the material replacement from zinc to aluminum, it cannot be realized yet. We applied the Semi-Solid die casting technique to the precision casting, and verified possibility of replacement of the material from zinc to aluminum