Similitude analysis on flow characteristics of water, A356 and AM50 alloys during LPC process

Abstract

The present work endeavours to map mold filling characteristics of water to real melts of A356 aluminium alloy and AM50 magnesium alloy during low pressure casting process (LPC). The analogy of dynamic similitude has been applied on a benchmarked computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based simulation model developed for tracking fluid free surfaces. Scaling factors for A356 and AM50 melts with respect to water are calculated by equating the non-dimensional numbers deduced from forces acting on the fluids. Buckingham's Pi theorem is used to verify the derived scaling equations. The mold filling time for water in the benchmarked simulation model and for real alloy melts in the scaled computational models is compared for different inlet pressure regimes. The proposed analogy is verified using variations occurring in velocity scaling factors for the melts during mold filling.