Preface

Abstract

The international conference on Modelling of Casting, Welding and Advanced Solidification Process (MCWASP) traces back to 1980, when the first conference on “Modeling of Casting and Welding Processes” was held in New Hampshire, USA. Since the previous MCWASP XIV, held in Japan 2015, the community has eagerly been awaiting and preparing to celebrate the 40th year anniversary with the 15th edition of MCWASP scheduled for 21-26. June 2020 at the venue Djurönäset in the archipelago of Stockholm, Sweden. The planning was made for a full 5-day conference consisting of presentations of recent scientific findings, and with plenty of time for personal contacts, exciting discussions and unforgettable experiences. However, as the new decade started, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic led to closed borders and international travel restrictions, and in March 2020 the decision was made to cancel the physical meeting. Nevertheless, the organizing committee continued the process of reviewing and publication of the papers contributed to the conference, and to proceed online. With this in mind, we are very happy to deliver the proceedings of the 40-year anniversary edition of this important conference series, the first MCWASP conference to be held online 22-23. June 2020 hosted from Jönköping, Sweden.In the proceedings, the first section contains the papers from the four keynote speakers. These speakers were invited to show the diversity in the topics of the conference, to provide a tribute to the history of MCWASP as well as perspectives on the future of scientific and industrial challenges within the scope of the conference. Michel Rappaz provides an exciting recap of the developments within microstructure modelling as well as computational power during the 40-year history of the MCWASP conference, with a keynote entitled “Does MCWASP still follow Moore’s law?”. Damien Tourret continues with a keynote entitled “Comparing mesoscopic models for dendritic growth”, showing a benchmark of different multi-scale modeling approaches for dendritic growth, discussing their relative strengths, limitations, and choices of parameters to achieve quantitative predictions. Patricio Mendez’ paper “Reduced order models for welding and solidification processes” shows that complex problems can indeed be treated with generality, accuracy, and simplicity. Jesper Thorborg completes the Keynote section with a paper entitled “The virtual core – modeling and optimization of core manufacturing and application” showing the details behind modeling the lifecycle of a sand core and its influence on casting quality.