Flow Analysis of Mold with Casting Filter Using Eulerian and Lagrangian Casting CAE Software

Abstract

  Casting CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) has recently become an indispensable tool for casting design and defect prediction. Casting filters are often installed in the flow path to control the melt flow rate in gating design, but the effectiveness of such filters must be validated through simulation. But, there is a limitation in using approximate models, such as Darcy’s law, which was used in the previous study, to analyze complex flow behavior in the casting filters. Recently, numerical analysis methods that closely approximate filter shapes are available. One approach is the SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics) particle method. However, one drawback of this method lies in its significant computational costs.

  In this study, we investigated the relationship between particle size, calculation accuracy, and calculation cost in the particle-based SPH method to accurately and efficiently simulate the flow behavior in casting filters. Furthermore, we also evaluated the characteristics and practicality between the Eulerian lattice method (PM method) with Darcy’s law, which models the filter section in terms of permeability, and the SPH method. The results clarified that although the performance of the SPH particle method can be improved by optimizing the particle size, its computational costs are still more expensive than the other methods. This therefore remains a practical issue that needs to be addressed.