한국주조공학회

Casting defects produced during the casting process seriously affect the mechanical properties of the resulting products, reduce the performance capabilities of the product, and also result in economic losses. Therefore, this paper mainly investigates the causes of defects and methods by which to reduce these defects stemming from molten metal flows in a runner system of the type widely used in the sand mold casting process. The flow characteristics of a molten alloy are difficult to observe during the actual casting process. For this reason, a water model was used to observe the flow in the casting process, and the flow in each case was recorded using high-speed cameras as part of the experimental process of this study. Several repetitive experiments were performed to improve the accuracy of the experimental results. The traditional casting system was modified according to the design rules proposed by Campbell, and the system was termed flow-adaptive gating system with a water model. Comparing the flow characteristics of traditional and adaptive gating systems with a water model shows that the bubbles in the water in the latter case are reduced more significantly than in the former case. A ceramic filter system was adapted to the flow-adaptive gating system to minimize the instability of the flow during filling, which occurs as the fluid velocity in the runner increases. In additional, the flow behavior with and without the filter system were compared. The water model system in this work was shown to be able to verify that the adaptation of the filter system brings improvements by stabilizing the flow and reducing the amount of bubbles in the runner system. Moreover, using the flow-adaptive runner system with the filter system leads to considerably stable flows in the runner system.

Water model experiment, Filter system, Flow behavior, Traditional gating system, Adaptive gating system