Abstract
The productivity of ductile iron foundries engaging in mass production of castings for the automobile and other engineering sectors depends on the number of cavities per mold. A denser packing of cavities, however, results in slower heat transfer from adjacent cavities, leading to delayed solidification, possible shrinkage defects, and lower mechanical properties. In this article, we propose a methodology to optimize mold yield by selecting the correct combination of the mold box size and the number of cavities based on solidification time and mold temperature. Simulation studies were carried out by modeling solid and hollow cube castings with different values of cavity-wall gap and finding the minimum value of the gap beyond which there is no change in casting solidification time. Then double-cavity molds were modeled with different values of cavity-cavity gap, and simulated to find the minimum value of gap. The simulation results were verified by melting and pouring ductile iron in green sand molds instrumented with thermocouples, and recording the temperature in mold at predetermined locations. The proposed approach can be employed to generate a technological database of minimum gaps for various combinations of part geometry, metal and process, which will be very useful to optimize the mold cavity layouts.
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