Assessment of the effect of 3D printed sand mold thickness on solidification process of AlSi13 casting alloy

Abstract

The present work addresses the printed sand mold thickness effect on the solidification process of a eutectic aluminum-silicon alloy (AlSi13). Several sand mold thicknesses (varying from 3 to 30 mm) are numerically studied using Quikcast® software. The study shows that the solidification time decreases when the sand thickness of mold increases. It is accelerated by more than 40% when the sand mold thickness increases from 3 to 30 mm. The numerical simulations are coupled with experiments. Indeed, the 3D sand printing process is used to fabricate molds presenting different thicknesses of 5 mm and 30 mm, respectively. In addition, the same printing parameters are applied for producing all sand molds. The comparison between both numerical and experimental results shows the same tendency according to the sand mold thickness. The results indicate that increasing the sand mold thickness from 5 to 30 mm allows to accelerate the solidification by 17% and 18.6%, respectively, in the numerical and experimental results. A finer microstructure is obtained when reducing the solidification time, which enhances the hardness of casting properties.