MATHEMATICAL MODELLING OF THE EFFECT OF FOAM DEGRADATION ON MOULD FILLING IN THE GREY IRON EPC PROCESS

In this investigation a new model was developed to calculate gas pressure at the melt/foam interface (Gap) resulting from foam degradation during mould filling in the Lost Foam Casting (LFC) process. Different aspects of the process, such as foam degradation, gas elimination, transient mass, heat transfer, and permeability of the refractory coating were incorporated into this model. A Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) code was developed based on the numerical technique of the SOLution Algorithm- Volume Of Fluid (SOLA- VOF) utilizing model, for the simulation and prediction of the fluid flow in the LFC process. In order to verify the computational results of the simulation, a thin plate of gray iron was poured into a transparentfoam mould. The mould filling process was recorded using a 16mm high-speed camera. Images were analysed frame by frame, in order to measuring foam depolymerization rate and the gap volume during mould filling. Comparison between the experimental method and the simulation results, for the LFC filling sequence, has shown a good agreement.