Dimensional shrinkage prediction based on displacement field in investment casting

Abstract

The preparation of the wax pattern is a key procedure in investment casting, playing an important role with the solidification of the metal on the final dimensional accuracy of the casting part. This study considered the injection procedure and the metal solidification as a whole and tried to discover the individual influence of both factors on the dimensional accuracy of the part. In this paper, a ring-to-ring wax pattern was scanned by a kind of 3D laser scanner after being injected, and its displacement field was used as the input of numerical analysis of the deformation happened in next step. Experimental measurement and numerical prediction were compared then, and the results indicated that predicted shrinkage based on the deformed wax pattern was close to the measured one with only 0.32 % difference on average, and the introduction of the injection procedure improves the numerical prediction by xxx%. The proposed method would benefit for the control of the shrinkage allowances of the casting part.