A Numerical Study of a Molten Aluminum for Investment Casting of 3D Cellular Metals

Investment casting processes are influenced by a variety of parameters. Many researches considering viscosity as a constant have been conducted up to this point. In particular, however, viscosity with temperature change has not been much accounted for solidification and heat transfer simulation of molten metal in the investment casting process. In addition, analysis of behavior of metal flow as well as air gap problems for complex network structures have not been investigated much. The aim of this study is to build transient metal flow and velocity profile models considering temperature dependent viscosity in investment casting processes of cellular structures. In this study, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling tool was used for metal flow and velocity profile in investment casting processing using User Defined Function (UDF) for temperature dependent viscosity. The results of the metal flow and velocity profile inside of the simple cylindrical geometry are represented. It is shown that for the validation of the numerical simulation, the velocity profile between analytical and numerical approaches showed very good agreement. Analytical approaches showed that velocity was reduced with the increase in viscosity, which is applied as a function of temperature. In particular, rapid decreasing in velocity was shown from under the melting temperature of the molten metal. There was no movement on metal flow at the room temperature. Numerical approaches showed that the liquid metal began to be solidified from the wall surface inside of the mold. For the same simulation time, it was shown that the metal flow in a cylinder that has 1mm diameter showed better fluidity rather than that of the cylinder that has 2mm diameter due to the increase in adhesion between liquid metal and the surface of the mold and surface tension between molten metal and air. The effective diameter by solidification is decreased with the time change.