Current developments and applications of InteCAST software

Abstract

With the development of computer hardware, numerical simulation of casting process has made rapid progress. The commercial software packages of casting process simulation, therefore, have become more and more practical. This paper introduces both the basic route of numerical simulation of casting process and the current developments of InteCAST software, a commercial numerical simulation software package of casting process. The mathematical model and some techniques, such as nonuniform elements technique, improved equivalent specific heat method, are introduced. Finite difference method is adopted for the simulation of mold filling and solidification process; the mold filling simulation is based on the SOLA-VOF method. The FDM/FEM integration method and FDM are employed for the simulation of stress field. The routes of these two methods and some simulation results are given respectively. Nonuniform elements technique, which employs fine elements for the boundary of different materials and coarse elements for the inner, can reduce the computational time greatly. The improved equivalent specific heat method, equivalent specific heat method with a pseudo solidification range for pure metal and integrated temperature emendation, is employed to deal with the latent heat, which can not only simplify the program but also save the memory and disk space.Then, three applications are given. The first one is about optimizing the riser system of steel casting. The process of ductile cast iron casting is analyzed secondly. Finally, the fluid flow sequence of gray cast iron is discussed. These applications show that the software can help technologists optimize casting process by forecasting the entrapped air and entrapped slag defects occurrence during mold filling process and shrinkage defects occurrence in the following solidification process.