Automatic Design of Overflow System for Preventing Gas Defects by Considering the Direction of Molten Metal Flow

Abstract

In die casting, gas defects occur if the molten metal entrains the gas inside the shot sleeve and mold and remains inside the product after filling. Therefore, an exhaust system such as an exhaust runner or overflow is generally designed at the die casting mold to discharge the gas-entrained molten metal outside the mold completely. In addition, an overflow has a broader designable area than an exhaust runner has and can discharge the gas-entrained molten metal, which an exhaust runner cannot. Therefore, designing the overflows at appropriate positions and volumes in die casting is essential. In recent years, research regarding the design of the overflow positions has been conducted by combining optimization theory and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). However, optimizing the overflow positions only can cause gas defects in the product and the unnecessary discharge of molten metal due to the overflow volume excess. Moreover, applying those methods is difficult because the analysis to verify the exhaust system includes the entire mold as the analysis domain, which increases calculation time. In this research, we propose the automatic overflow design system to discharge the gas-entrained molten metal inside the product completely by estimating the direction of molten metal flow and evaluating the efficiency of overflow design positions. Finally, we verified the effectiveness of the proposed system by actual die casting experiments using the proposed overflow shape.