Multi-Physics and Multi-Scale Meshless Simulation System for Direct-Chill Casting of Aluminium Alloys

This paper represents an overview of the elements of the user-friendly simulation system, developed for computational analysis and optimization of the quality and productivity of the electromagnetically direct-chill cast semi-products from aluminium alloys. The system also allows the computational estimation of the design changes of the casting equipment. To achieve this goal, the electromagnetic and the thermofluid process parameters are coupled to the evolution of Lorentz force, temperature, velocity, concentration, strain and stress fields as well as microstructure evolution. This forms a multi-physics and multi-scale problem of great complexity, which has not been demonstrated before. The macroscopic fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, and electromagnetic solution framework is based on local strong-form meshless formulation, involving the radial basis functions and monomials as trial functions, and local collocation or weighted least squares approximation. It is coupled to the micro-scale by incorporating the point automata solution concept. The entire macro-micro solution concept does not require meshing and space integration. The solution procedure can be easily and efficiently automatically adapted in node redistribution and/or refinement sense, which is of utmost importance when coping with fields exhibiting sharp gradients, which occur in the phase-change problems. The simulation system is coded from scratch in modern Fortran. The elements of the experimental validation of the system and the demonstration of its use for round billet casting in IMPOL Aluminium Industry are shown.