Research&Development Of Investment Casting Process Design System Based On Knowledge

Investment Casting is an advanced near net-shape forming process. It can produceprecision castings with high quality and has been used widely in traditional civilianindustry, aerospace industry and national defense industry. In recent years, InvestmentCasting develops rapidly and the proportion of Investment Casting in foundry industry isgrowing continuously.Process design is the core procedure of casting’s production and has a direct impacton the quality of the final casting. The paper studies the process of the casting processdesign, analysis the needs of the technology staff in the design process, aims to acceleratethe design process and improve the quality of the process design. Ultimately, using theCAD/CAE method optimizes casting’s process maximizing before the real trialproduction.Firstly, the paper states the research background and significant of the InvestmentCasting process design system based on knowledge, introduces present development ofknowledge management, knowledge based library system and digital casting processdesign. Through analyzing the property of the casting enterprise, the paper brings thenarrow knowledge management concept into the Investment Casting fields and realizesrapid process design based on knowledge and knowledge management.Secondly, the paper analyzes the knowledge characteristics of casting enterprise andproposes the knowledge classification method. For different knowledge categories,different expressions are adopted. For the implicit knowledge expression problem, studiesthe implicit knowledge’s expression extraction and expression method in the InvestmentCasting enterprise. Based on these, Investment Casting knowledge library is established.Next, based on the knowledge management, the paper studies the characteristics ofcasting process design and sums up the computational model which is fit for rapid processdesign of the gating and the riser system. And then, designs the casting processmanagement module, aims to manage the casting process information, design results andCAE simulation results by the engineering point of view.Finally, designs the system in detail, divides the system’s main function module and develops the initial prototype system of Investment Casting process design based onknowledge.