Using knowledge about thermally induced casting stresses in design and manufacturing is gaining acceptance in industry. These stresses are the root cause of many quality issues in castings, such as distortion, cracking, or reduced lifetime during operation.
Casting stresses are changed significantly during the manufacturing process. As-cast residual stresses may be uncritical, but trimming or raw part machining causes a redistribution of residual stresses and may already lead to stress concentrations which result in cracks.
Subsequent heat treatment reduces the stresses but may lead to further time and temperature dependent casting distortion. Due to high cooling rates during quenching, substantial stresses develop, which are only partially reduced by a subsequent tempering process and final machining.
Casting process and stress simulation in MAGMASOFT ® is capable of addressing each of these process steps and predicts the impact of the process and the component’s design on the stress and strain levels. The finished part stresses can be exported to be used as an input for performance simulations.