Optimisation of aluminium castings (IDEAL).

The acronym IDEAL means Integrated Development Routes for Optimised Cast Aluminium Components. IDEAL is a research project, financed by the European Community inside the GROWTH programme, aimed at achieving the efficient integration of the various tools of process simulation into the design chain, optimising aluminium castings all the way from design to prototype production. The set up of an integrated software tool and methodology to support the concurrent engineering of cast aluminium components should reduce the development time and improve the product quality, leading to the production of more reliable, efficient and optimised Aluminium cast components. This horizontal integration approach should also lead the designer to the best possible use of aluminium for automotive castings, making lighter components and thus decreasing fuel consumption and reducing CO2 emissions. The main scientific objective is to have a better understanding of the evolution of the aluminium structure during casting (including filling of die and solidification) and post casting process stages, supplying realistic mechanical characteristics to designers. Great interest is also on residual stresses in the component after cooling. Efficiency of design, achieved by means of the use of optimisation techniques, will supply strong reductions on testing time, lead time to market and costs for the industries. The tasks focus on: - optimizing the casting process; - predicting the metallurgical quality and the mechanical properties in the castings through the use of microstructural models; - exporting the results of process and properties simulation to commercial finite element codes for stress analyses; - demonstrating and evaluating the effect of new and conventional post casting treatments to improve the performance of castings and thus facilitate light weight design. The whole methodology was tested on demonstrators, constituted by industrially significant aluminium castings intended as automotive components (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD E212343.