GPU based numerical simulation of core shooting process

Abstract

Core shooting process is the most widely used technique to make sand cores and it plays an important role in the quality of sand cores. Although numerical simulation can hopefully optimize the core shooting process, research on numerical simulation of the core shooting process is very limited. Based on a two-fluid model (TFM) and a kinetic-friction constitutive correlation, a program for 3D numerical simulation of the core shooting process has been developed and achieved good agreements with in-situ experiments. To match the needs of engineering applications, a graphics processing unit (GPU) has also been used to improve the calculation efficiency. The parallel algorithm based on the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) platform can significantly decrease computing time by multi-threaded GPU. In this work, the program accelerated by CUDA parallelization method was developed and the accuracy of the calculations was ensured by comparing with in-situ experimental results photographed by a high-speed camera. The design and optimization of the parallel algorithm were discussed. The simulation result of a sand core test-piece indicated the improvement of the calculation efficiency by GPU. The developed program has also been validated by in-situ experiments with a transparent core-box, a high-speed camera, and a pressure measuring system. The computing time of the parallel program was reduced by nearly 95% while the simulation result was still quite consistent with experimental data. The GPU parallelization method can successfully solve the problem of low computational efficiency of the 3D sand shooting simulation program, and thus the developed GPU program is appropriate for engineering applications.