Effect of Gating Design on Melt Flow Velocity in Gravity Sand casting using AM-Enabled Molds

Abstract

This research thesis deals with the effect of gating design on melt flow characteristics in sand casting. Different gating designs have been studied by varying the number of ingates and prospective benefits of AM-enabled molds to design these filling systems has been noted. This thesis focussed on simulation work conducted on casting using flow3dcast software. The ingates is the portion of the mold which connects the filling system to mold cavity. The goal of the thesis was to find out if it was feasible to increase the number of ingates while increasing the metal input rate. This would lead to faster filling of the mold. Filling simulation was performed for 3 different cases using one ingate, 2 ingates and 4 ingates. A test case simulation was also performed with alternate filling system. 2 filling systems were considered, conventional system composed of conical basin, tapered sprue and a sprue well and alternate system composed of offset basin, tapered sprue and curved connection to runner. The results showed that the filling time can be reduced from 7 seconds in case of single ingate to 3.5 seconds with 4 ingates using a conventional filling system, , while minimizing the air entrapment in mold cavity. This showed that increasing the number of gates from 1 to 4 reduced the filling time to half and this would could eventually lead to doubling the production rate of foundries. Keywords: melt, flow, velocity, ingates, casting, sprue, runner, basin.