Computer Simulations Of Magnesium Alloys Die Casting Processes

In this paper, the mold filling simulations were done with the aid of Flow-3d software. The magnesium alloys die casts referred in the paper were 480sc valve chamber cover, ZJ1 dynamotor support, ZJ2 dynamotor support and S11 air condition support. Simulation comprises pre-process, solver process and post-process. The pre-process is an important process. The 3-D geometrical entity should be imported into the simulation software first. Then the proper meshing should be done according to the die-cast features in order to avoid the incompletion or the increase of the mesh quantities. The boundary conditions and process parameters should be determined subsequently. Then the simulation could be done. The gating system could be optimized based on the analysis of the simulation results. At the same time, the process parameters such as the temperature of the melt alloy, the temperature of the die and the injection velocity could be optimized. In this paper, only one example was explained about each optimization item. The mold optimization was done on 480sc valve chamber cover. And the optimizations of die temperature, the injection velocity and the melt alloy temperature were respectively done on ZJ1, ZJ2 dynamotor support and S11 air condition support. The practical die casts were made under the optimized process parameters. The nonstandard tensile specimens were gotten from die casts. The mechanical properties of die casting magnesium alloys were investigated. And by means of SEM, observations on fracture surfaces were carried out.The study shows that meshing is an important part in the die-casting simulation process. Solving time could be obviously deduced with good use of non-uniform meshing. The gating system has great influence on the filling process. So the filling results could be improved through modifying the gating system according to the simulation results. During the checking process, the properties of the die casts could be determined. On one hand, the die casts in this paper are complex and the specimens are nonstandard, while the referred values are of simple die casting round bar. On the other hand, maybe the process parameters are still not the mostoptimized. But these results already meet the need of the practical engineering. So the experiments are comparatively successful.