Identification of interfacial heat transfer between molten metal and green sand by inverse heat conduction method

Heat flux and heat transfer coefficients at the interfaces of castings and molds are important parameters in the mold design and computer simulations of the solidification process in foundry operations. A better understanding of the heat flux and heat transfer coefficient between the solidifying casting and its mold can promote model design and improve the accuracy of computer simulation.; The main purpose of the present dissertation involves the estimation of the heat flux and heat transfer coefficient at the interface of the molten metal and green sand. Since the inverse heat conduction method requires temperature measurement data to deduce the missing surface information, it is suitable for the present research. However, heat transfer inside green sand is complicated by the migration of water vapor and zonal temperature distribution results. This makes the solution of the inverse heat conduction problem more challenging.; In this dissertation, Galerkin's method of Weighted Residual together with the front tracking technique is used in the development of a forward solver. Beck's future time step method incorporated with the Gaussian iterative minimization method is used as the inverse solver. The mathematical descriptions of the sensitivity coefficient for both the direct heat flux and direct heat transfer coefficient estimation are derived. The variations of the sensitivity coefficients with time are revealed. From the analysis of sensitivity coefficients, the concept of blank time period is proposed. This blank time period makes the inverse problem much more difficult. A total energy balance criterion is used to combat this. Numerical experiments confirmed the accuracy and robustness of both the direct heat flux estimation algorithm and the direct heat transfer coefficient estimation algorithm.; Finally, some pouring experiments are carried out. The inverse algorithms are applied to the estimation of the heat flux and heat transfer coefficient at the interface of the molten metal and green sand with the input of measured temperature data from field experiments. The heat flux and heat transfer coefficient history at the interface of molten metal and green sand are obtained.