Advanced Casting Processes

CO: For a given vertical or bottom gating mould, students will

be able to design riser and determine mould filling time and
total solidification time.

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SOLIDIFICATION OF METALS
Pure Metals
# A pure metal solidifies at a constant temperature equal to
its freezing point, which is the same as its melting point.
The cooling curve is shown in figure.
# The actual freezing takes time, called the local solidification
time in casting, during which the metal’s latent heat of
fusion is released into the surrounding mould.
# The total solidification time is the time taken between
pouring and complete solidification

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Cooling curve

Temperature Gradient

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Grain formation and growth (Pure Metal)

# Randomly oriented small grains at the surface of the mould
(skin)
# The grains in the skin to be fine and randomly oriented.
# further grain formation and growth occur in a direction away
from the heat transfer. The grains grow inwardly as needles or
spines of solid metal in a direction opposite to heat transfer.

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Most Alloys
Most alloys freeze over a temperature range rather than at a single
temperature. The exact range depends on the alloy system and the
particular composition.
The direction of crystal growth in an alloy depends on:
 Composition gradient within the casting
 Variation of solidus temperature within the casting
 Thermal gradient within the mould
A

Temperature B

D
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 Advanced Casting Processes

Phase diagram for an arbitrary binary alloy AB

f
P
O

% age of B
Q

 O
CO
 Q Q
Solid-Liquid interface
 P P d

C1 CO Distance from mould face

% age of B

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Centreline Shrinkage
If crystallisation at Q gets completed before it starts at P due to
►very small thermal gradient,
►with a very high concentration difference and
►a very sloppy solidus line)

Then randomly oriented crystals may appear inside the cavity.

Moreover the presence of solid crystals ahead of solid/liquid
interface makes feeding of liquid metal more difficult. This also
implies greater risk of having voids within the casting and normally
referred to as centreline shrinkage.

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Freezing diagram for ordinary sand mould Freezing diagram for chilled mould

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Centreline Feeding Resistance (CFR)

The difficulty of feeding a given alloy in mould is expressed by CFR
and is given by

Referring to the above figures

Normally feeding is considered to be difficult if CFR ˃ 70%

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Gating system

Components
# Pouring basin
# Sprue
# Sprue base or well
# Runner
# Choke
# Skim bob
# Gates or ingates
# Riser
# Splash core*

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Gating system can be classified into three categories:

a) Vertical gating
b) Bottom gating
c) Horizontal gating

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GATING DESIGN (Simple vertical gating)

Assumptions:
 The pressure at points ‘1’ and ‘3’
are equal (atmospheric)
 The molten metal at point ‘1’ is
maintained at a constant level
 Friction losses are neglected

Using Bernoulli’s equation for energy

balance between points ‘1’ and ‘3’

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Time to fill up the mould

V is the mould volume and Ag is the area of the gate

Prob: Molten metal can be poured into the pouring cup of a sand mould at
a steady rate of 1000 cm3/s. The molten metal overflows the pouring cup
and flows into the downsprue. The cross-section of the sprue is round, with
a diameter at the top = 3.4 cm. If the sprue is 25 cm long, determine the
proper diameter at its base so as to maintain the same volume flow rate.

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Velocity v

Area at base A

Diameter, D

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Analysis of bottom gating

Assumptions:
The overall dimension of the
mould is very large so that
velocity at point ‘4’ is assumed to
be negligible

Using Bernoulli’s equation for energy

balance between points ‘1’ and ‘3

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Assumption: velocity at point ‘4’ is very small and the kinetic energy
at point ‘3’ is lost after the liquid metal enters the mould.
Using Bernoulli’s equation between points ‘3’ and ‘4’

From eqn. 1 and eqn. 2, the velocity of liquid metal at the gate

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If at any instant, the level of molten metal in the mould moves upward
through a height dh in a time interval of dt, and if Am and Ag are the cross-
sectional areas of mould and gate respectively, then

Integrating the eqn. 4, we get

At t = 0, h = 0 and at t = tf (mould
filling time), h = hm

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If a riser is used, the pouring time tf must also include the time needed to fill
up the riser.
Normally, the open risers are filled up to the level of pouring sprue.
Thus the time taken to fill up the riser is calculated with Am replaced by riser
cross-sectional area Ar and hm by ht in eqn. 5.
Comparison with vertical gating
In bottom gating the molten metal enters the mould with a much slower
velocity and the overall time needed to fill up the mould is much higher.

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Thank you

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