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Gating System Design for a Magnesium Alloy Casting

Zhizhong SUN, Henry HU , Xiang CHEN, Qigui WANG and Wenying YANG
1) Department of Mechanical, Automotive & Materials Engineering; University of Windsor; Windsor, Ontario, Canada, N9B 3P4, Canada 2) Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering; University of Windsor; Windsor, Ontario, Canada, N9B 3P4, Canada 3) General Motors Corporation; Pontiac, MI 48340, USA
[Manuscript received September 3, 2007]

The gating system of a cylindrical magnesium casting has been designed by using multiple objective optimization and Taguchi method. Mold lling and solidication processes were simulated by using MAGMASOFT . The simulation results indicate that the gating system design has a signicant eect on the quality of magnesium castings. In an eort to obtain the optimal design of gating system, the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio was used to analyze the eect of various gating designs on cavity lling and casting quality by using a weighting method based on the design of an orthogonal array. Four gating system parameters, namely, ingate height, ingate width, runner height, runner width, were optimized with a consideration of multiple objective criteria including lling velocity, shrinkage porosity and product yield. KEY WORDS: Gating system; Magnesium casting; Optimization; Taguchi method 1. Introduction Numerous eorts have been made by castings engineers and researchers on gating system design over the past few decades[16] . Although there are general casting design rules and empirical equations for the gating ratio, pouring time, and gating system dimensions, the variations in casting parameters have led to signicant variations in empirical guidelines[34] . As a result, foundries need to conduct a number of trial and error runs and to create guidelines based on their own experience. This leads to not only a long casting development cycle but also a low reliability of casting design due to variation of individual knowledge and experience. Until recently, optimization technique has been adopted to casting gating design. In 1993, Bradley and Heinemann applied a numerical optimization methodology to gating system design[9] . In 1997, MacDavid and Dantzig[10,11] used a mathematical approach addressing the design sensitivity in a 2D mold geometry. After that, numerical simulators based on nite dierence method (FDM) and nite element method (FEM) methods provide powerful means of analyzing various phenomena occurring during casting process[12] . There are several optimization methods that have been utilized in gating system design, such as the gradient search method, the FEM neural network method, and the Taguchi method[1315] . Certain applications of the Taguchi method in the foundry industry have shown that the variation in casting quality caused by uncontrollable process variables can be minimized[1620] . Magnesium alloys have high susceptibility to oxidation and hydrogen absorption. The design of gating system in Mg castings can have a signicant inuence on the formation of oxides and microporosity[7,8] . This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of gating system design in a magnesium casting by coupling Taguchi method with numerical simulation. 2. Design of Experiment A cylindrical housing casting was used in
Prof., Ph.D., to whom correspondence should be addressed, E-mail: huh@uwindsor.ca.

Fig.1. Two Mg alloys of AM50 and AM60B were selected and the weight of housing is approximately 30 kg. As shown in Fig.1, bottom lling of the mold was employed. A pouring basin and tapered sprue were used and metal was introduced into the casting cavity through one runner and two ingates. The gating system of the housing casting is controlled by using four independent parameters, namely, ingate height, ingate width, runner height, and runner width. The parameter ranges of the design variables (factors) are given in Table 1. To evaluate the casting soundness in gating design, several quality and cost criteria, such as lling velocity, porosity level, yield, etc. were selected for multiple objective optimization. With the L9 (34 ) orthogonal array of the Taguchi method, the signal-tonoise (S/N) ratio was calculated in analyzing the effect of various gating system designs on cavity lling and casting quality. The details of the various aspects of the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio can be found in references[1618] . 3. Results and Discussion 3.1 Computational experiments The 3-D solid and STL models of the test casting were created and converted by the Unigraphics NX4.0 of UGS Corp. The thermophysical properties of both AM50 and AM60B alloys and other initial and boundary conditions of casting process simulation were determined from the MAGMAsoft database. Both MAGMAsoft 3-D post-processor and MAGMAlink[21] were utilized to show the simulation results, as shown in Fig.2 and Table 2. 3.2 Mean multiresponse S/N ratios with dierent combination of weighting factors Based on the simulation results from Table 2, the value of the weighting factor for the multiresponse S/N ratios is dependent on the dierent engineering requirements. The response of each factor to its individual level was calculated by averaging the S/N ratios of all experiments at each level for each factor.

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Fig.1 Gating system design and gating parameters of housing casting

Fig.2 3-D post-processor lling velocity and shrinkage porosity prediction Table 1 Gating System Parameters and their levels Level 1 2 3 (a) Ingate height 45 50 55 Factor/mm (b) Ingate width (c) Runner height 40 30 45 35 50 40 (d) Runner width 50 55 60

Table 2 Numerical simulation result for product yield, shrinkage porosity and lling velocity Experiment number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Product yield/% 88.4858 87.5994 86.6763 87.1393 87.7218 87.7995 87.1987 87.3774 87.8704 Shrinkage porosity/% (AM50) 0.0798 0.0650 0.0504 0.0709 0.0584 0.0411 0.0393 0.1568 0.0944 (AM60B) 0.1454 0.0972 0.0864 0.1007 0.125 0.0828 0.0668 0.2918 0.1384 Filling velocity/(cm/s) (AM50) 103.5 46.57 45.04 48.01 56.89 48.76 42.02 43.32 44.38 (AM60B) 90.26 48.33 45.65 49.01 66.02 48.08 42.92 43.68 54.27

With three combinations of weighting factors, the factor s mean multiresponse S/N ratios for each level are illustrated in Fig.3. Three study cases were considered based on the signicance of each contributing factor. For case 1, the objective is composed of 50% product yield (1 =0.5), 20% shrinkage porosity (2 =0.2), and 30% lling velocity (3 =0.3). For case

2, the objective is composed of 30% product yield (1 =0.3), 50% shrinkage porosity (2 =0.5), and 20% lling velocity (3 =0.2). Finally, for case 3, the objective is composed of 10% product yield (1 =0.1), 20% shrinkage porosity (2 =0.2), and 70% lling velocity (3 =0.7). For case 1 and case 2, the A2B3C3D2 is the maximum mean multiresponse S/N ratio. For case 3,

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Fig.3 Mean multiresponse signal-to-noise graph for (a) case 1 (1 =0.5, 2 =0.2, 3 =0.3), (b) case 2 (1 =0.3, 2 =0.5, 3 =0.2), (c) case 3 (1 =0.1, 2 =0.2, 3 =0.7)

the A3B3C3D2 is the maximum mean multiresponse S/N ratio. 4. Conclusions (1) The multiple quality and cost criteria such as product yield, shrinkage porosity, and lling velocity can be simultaneously considered and improved through the optimization technique. (2) For case 1 and case 2, the A2B3C3D2 is the optimum level. While for case 3, the A3B3C3D2 is an optimal design. The optimum level will be dierent for dierent weighting factors. (3) The optimal design of the runner (runner height of 40 mm and runner width of 55 mm) indicates that the low wide runner is eective to reduce the metal velocity at the ingate which is consistent with the ndings reported in the previous research[2,13,22] .

Acknowledgement This work was supported by the General Motors Canada and the University of Windsor. REFERENCES [1 ] J.Campbell: Castings, Elsevier ButterworthHeinemann, 2003. [2 ] X.Yang, M.Jolly and J.Campbell: MCWASP IX, 2000, 420-427. [3 ] J.Runyoro, S.M.A.Boutorabi and J.Campbell: AFS

Trans., 1992, 225-234. [4 ] J.Campbell: Materials Solutions Conference on Aluminum Casting Technology, Chicago, 1998, 3. [5 ] J.M.Svoboda: American Foundry Men s Society Cast Metals Institute AFS-CMI, 1995. [6 ] F.Bradley and S.Heinemann: Appl. Math. Model., 1993, 17, 406. [7 ] C.A.Aliravci and J.E.Gruzleski: AFS Transaction, 1992, 115, 353. [8 ] H.Hu and A.Luo: JOM, 1996, 10, 47. [9 ] F.Bradley and S.Heinemann: Appl. Math. Model., 1993, 17, 406. [10] R.M.McDavid and J.A.Dantzig: J. Numerical Methods Fluids, 1998, 28. [11] R.M.McDavid and J.A.Dantzig: MCWASP VIII, 1998, 59. [12] J.Kor, Z.Li, H.Hu, X.Chen, Q.G.Wang and W.Yang: TMS, San Antonio, 2006, 177. [13] K.S.Lee and J.C.Lin: Int. J. Adv. Manuf. Technol., 2006, 27, 1089. [14] C.E.Esparza: Comput. Mater. Sci., 2006, 36, 457. [15] K.S.Anastasion: J. Eng. Manuf., 2002, 216, 969. [16] G.Taguchi: Introduction to Quality Engineering, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1998. [17] D.M.Byrne and S.Taguchi: Qual. Prog., 1987, 12, 19. [18] R.E.Johnston: AFS Trans., 1989, 82, 415. [19] P.Kumar and J.L.Gaindhar: Qual. Reliab. Eng. Int. 1995, 11, 175. [20] P.B.Barua, P.Kumar and J.L.Gaindhar: AFS Trans., 1997, 45, 763. [21] MAGMASOFTr (version 4.4) Release Notes and Manual, Magma Foundry Technologies, Chicago, 2006. [22] R.P.Pischel: Modern Casting, 2006, 7, 24.