Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Published purpose

Die casting is a high-volume manufacturing process used for a variety of components from appliances to automotive parts. It enables the production of complex, thin, integrated components by injecting a liquid alloy at high velocity into a steel die where the melt rapidly solidifies. This can however result in gas entrapment, causing detrimental porosity. Filling a large, complex and thin cavity in a very short period of time (e.g. between 20-to-80 ms) involves turbulent flow and high-velocity impact of the melt on the die faces while the liquid alloy solidifies. A key consideration is that structural die cast components have stringent property limits, including ductility. Although the die casting process has been used for decades and industrial operators have learned empirically how to alter the die faces to promote quality, there are still fundamental gaps in understanding and modelling the fast, turbulent filling and rapid solidification of the alloy especially at the surfaces. The collaborative project intends to better understand and model the fast transient metallurgical, fluid and thermal physics in aluminium HPVDC.