Comparative RANS turbulence modelling of lost salt core viability in high pressure die casting

Abstract

In this work, the implementation of three turbulence models inside the open source C++ computational fluid dynamics (CFD) library OpenFOAM were tested in 2D and 3D to determine the viability of salt cores in high pressure die casting. A finite-volume and volume of fluid approach was used to model the two-phase flow of molten metal and air, with the latter being treated as compressible. Encouragingly, it is found that, although the choice of turbulence model seems to affect the dispersion of the two-phase interface, the force acting at the surface of the salt core depends only very weakly on the turbulence model used. The results were also compared against those obtained using the commercially available and widely-used casting software MAGMA5.