On the CFD Modelling of Slamming of the Metal Melt in High-Pressure Die Casting Involving Lost Cores

Abstract

This paper uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD), in the form of the OpenFOAM software package, to investigate the forces on the salt core in high-pressure die casting (HPDC) when being exposed to the impact of the inflowing melt in the die filling stage, with particular respect to the moment of first impact—commonly known as slamming. The melt-air system is modelled via an Eulerian volume-of-fluid approach, treating the air as a compressible perfect gas. The turbulence is treated via a Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) approach. The RNG k-ε and the Menter SST k-ω models are both evaluated, with the use of the latter ultimately being adopted for batch computations. A study of the effect of the Courant number, with a view to establishing mesh independence, indicates that meshes which are finer, and time steps that are smaller, than those previously employed for HPDC simulations are required to capture the effect of slamming on the core properly, with respect to existing analytical models and empirical measurements. As a second step, it is then discussed what response should be expected when this force, with its spike-like morphology and small force-time integral, impacts the core. It is found that the displacement of the core due to the spike in the force is so small that, even though the force is high in value, the bending stress inside the core remains below the critical limit for fracture. It can therefore be concluded that, when assuming homogeneous crack-free material conditions, the spike in the force is not failure-critical.