CAST-DESIGNER

Process Analysis

Gating System Design

3D Product

Advance Modules
and Functions

FULL SOLUTION FOR CASTING BUSINESS

UNIQUE PRODUCTS TO REDEFINE COMPETITIVENESS
Cast-Designer Overview

DFM Check Casting

Gating CAE
Production
System Analysis
Quotation

Cast-Designer is a software package special Cast-Designer could be used for high

designed for casting business, includes the pressure die casting, low pressure die
casting part design and evaluation, mould casting, gravity casting for sand, gravity
design and validation and casting production casting for permanent mould, investment
optimization. casting and many others.

Cast-Designer combined the KBE system,
design system and last CAE technology
together, it is a tailor-designer casting planning
& simulation system for all casting process.
Even a novel with limited experience in
simulation who can easier to undertake the
design setup in very short period of time.
In other word, Cast-Designer can help the
industry to achieve the target of Time to
Market and Quality to Market.

CAST-DESIGNERTM

Computation
ParaView

Modeling

Geo-Designer Quotation Plot history Report Setup Exit

Cast-Designer software interface

Geo-Designer for DFM Analysis

DFM Analysis is the rst step for part manufacturing. It

is the bridge to link the part designer and manufacturing
suppliers. Geo-Designer is a powerful upfront Design
for Manufacturing (DFM) tools for designers and
manufacturing engineers with innovative technology.

Geo-Designer can bring very clear benet to casting

part designer and mould supplier, such as the MDI/HDI
analysis, slider checking, draft angle and undercut
checking, ejection force evaluation, riser and feeder
design, cores extraction, cooling system designer etc.
3D Casting geometry

First Upfront Analysis Tool for

Design for Manufacturing (DFM)

Mass Distribution Index (MDI)
Heat Distribution Index (HDI)
MDI checking(shrinkage porosity)

Engine block DFM checking, riser design and core extration

With the Free Design module, design
engineers can speed-up the gating system
design from hours to minutes, also the
design work becomes so interesting and
easily.
The design process was just like the drafting
on the paper. The user drafts the control
points and the feature lines of the sprue
runner, main runner and gate runner, then
drags and moves the control points or
feature points in the main view in mouse.
While the runner properties and section
properties could be dened by the design
wizard and KBE system, the user also can
modify the whole gating system in a few
clicks.
Free-Design for Gating System
3D feature line
Thanks to the powerful Free Design function,
generate 3D gating system becomes so easy.
There are three design levels in Free
Design, the gating system level, the runner
level and the section level. With the three
levels control, the user could adjust the
gating system exibility. Also, the KBE for
gating system was fully integrated in the
whole design process to guide the right
direction.
With Free Design, even a new user, they
can start the design work after a short
training, i.e. one hour or less. For a familiar
user, only spend 10 to 20 minutes to
generate a high quality gating system.
Free design also supports pre-dened
template library. The customize tools can
help user to make customization in a few
clicks.
3D gating system
In Cast-Designer, the start point has been
shifted to casting part stage sine the system
generate gating system directly.

Gating system and simulation of automatic part

Gating system of engine block Gating system of permanent mould gravity casting
Outstanding New Generation CFD Solver

The Cast-Designer CFD Solver uses large
computers to nd solutions to these equations
using what are known as nite-volume
approximations to the Navier-Stokes
equations. One of the most interesting aspects
of uid ow that occurs in casting processes is
that there are sharp uid interfaces that
separate different uids from one another. The
Cast-Designer CFD Solver program uses its
nite volume approximations to follow the way
that a lava lamp behaves.
Another phenomena that is important is
called surface tension. Cast-Designer
CFD Solver includes special models that
help it to include these kinds of effects in
its simulation. Surface tension is greatly
inuenced by the temperature of the uid
at the interface.

Simulation result of Cast-Designer CFD Solver vs experiment.

The experiment was performed by Dr. Markus Schmid at ARGE Metallguss in Aalen, Germany

Flow result of sand gravity casting, simulated by Cast-Designer CFD solver

Provides Excellent Casting Flow Results

When uid ows there is usually internal friction that eventually brings the uid to rest,
unless it is being pushed by some kind of force. This is important in deciding how quickly
uid sloshing dies out and is included in simulations of metal casting.

Finally, the ow section of Cast-Designer CFD solver is responsible for evaluating the
advection of both enthalpy and solute concentrations. The heat-transfer/phase-change
section evaluates conduction and the sources/sinks of solute.

More ever, the Cast-Designer CFD Solver could full couple to the existed Cast-Designer
FEM solver for thermal, stress and microstructure simulation. Both the solvers are using the
same mesh system, only one addition page for the pre-process and exactly same result of
post-process, so there is no any addition works to the user.

Flow pattern of the simulation and short shot Gas porosity of HPDC

(a)
X-Ray photo of the actual part

(a) (b)

(b)
Gas entrapment of simulation result

(c) (d) (c)

(a) (c) Short shot result Flow pattern shows gas entrapment
(b)(d) Cast-Designer CFD solver simulation result
Cooling System Design and Analysis
Fast cooling analysis in Cast-Designer
The cooling system designer is a CAD base
module to help cooling channel generation
in Cast-Designer. It provides a very exible
way to generate any complex cooling
system, like cooling channel and heat
channel.
To optimize the cooling system design, the
numerical methods for casting simulation
are relatively mature with the great
contribution of academic works. However,
before numerical simulation, the user must
had all 3D CAD data at early stage, this
usually difcult since so many design plan
were there need test, also the longer
modeling and simulation time is very difcult
to afford for Time to Market business.
Cast-Designer introduces an online
cooling system analysis method to help
designer check the cooling system
design at the very early stage, it is fully
integrated to the cooling system design
interface and the user can get result
within 3 to 5 minutes.
The online analyze can consider the
features of part geometry, the cooling
channel numbers and location, also the
heat affection, the nal result can show
the heat affection between the casting
part and cooling channel. As the
analysis result, the user can adjust or
redesign the cooling channel
immediately.
 Cast-Designer Full Mould Solution

The die casting process module provides the

capability for mould cycling in permanent die.
Denition of all important parameters
inuencing heat ow and the thermal balance
of mould.
Comprehensive denition of the entire cycle
process
Ejection time (controlled by time or
casting temperatures)
Die opening sequence (as function of
time)
Delay time (simulating effect of cycle
interruptions on the thermal balance) Casting and mould temperature of
Die closing sequence (as function of the casting process
time and temperature)
Lead time until beginning of the next
cycle
Variations in the lead time can be
simulated

Die Cooling & Tempering

Complete consideration of die cooling and
tempering system
Individual control of each cooling or
tempering channel
Channel control can be dependent on time
or temperatures

Cycling simulation to achieve the thermal balance

Temperature distribution on the die surface during the complete casting cycle
Cast-Designer Mould Assembly
The full mould meshing and assembly could
be carried out easily and it has been done in
Cast-Designer in one chick, it saves more
than 90% manual work and meshing time.
There are lots of innovation technologies
behind the software interface, such as the
re-mesh technology of different contact
interface, coarse mesh technology, mesh
mapping technology and automatic driving
technology.
Full mould of aluminual wheel in LPDC
Cast-Designer uses mixture elements for casting and
mould.
The mesh assembly result with very good affective
ratio for the casting to full mould. The casting part
with 117,336 nodes, the x mould with 44,993 nodes
and the movable mould with 55,997 nodes, plus other
sliders, the global affective ratio was up to 38.2%.
Full mould assembly in mixture mesh
Best in class
Cast-Designer mesh assembly module can
build complex meshes from a full 3D CAD
assembly that includes casting and all major
components of the die.
Fully automatic mould assembly with node
connection, support mixture mesh type, like
tetrahedral mesh and hexahedral mesh
together. The mesh model is very affective
compared with other solution.
Mesh level Boolean operation for objects,
sort objects priority order to extract new
objects from cavities.
Several mesh methods are available. Tens
time faster than the traditionally meshing
method.
Even if a poor quality CAD geometry, it is
still possible to generate a high quality
mesh for casting and mould in mould
assembly.
Casting Production

Casting Production (optimization) is a special

module in Cast-Designer to optimize the casting
process to achieve the best productivity and
cost rate, as well as the product quality.

Cycle time of a casting part in mass production

process is very important as the rate of
production and the quality of the parts produced
depend on it, whereas the cycle time of a part (a) Temperature after casting
can be reduced by reducing the cooling time ejection (before optimization)
which can only be achieved by the uniform
temperature distribution in the molded part which
helps in quick dissipation of heat.

(b) Casting temperature after

ejection (after optimization)

(d) Mould temperature after

ejection (before optimization)

(c) Cooling channel optimization

(in casting production)

At the same time, the mould

(e) Mould temperature after
ejection (after optimization)
(f) 3 iterations to help reduce cycling
time from 86 sec to 66.1 sec
temperature should be maintained a
uniform distribution to minimum the part
warping and extend the die life time.
With Cast-Designer cycling simulation
and production optimization, the
temperature distributions resulted from
the combined effects of die heating
(during lling and solidication),
spraying and air blow-off, and the
cooling channels and inserts can be
accurately and efciently predicted.
Thermal and Mechanical Stress Simulation

Stress and hot tearing of an aluminum housing

With the Cast-Designer mechanical stress
module, the user can make the stress and
distortion analysis. The following result could
be obtained after the simulation:

Casting and mould stress distribution

Part deformation and distortion
Displacements (a) Full mould
Gap formation between the casting and
mould
Predict elastic springback
Hot tearing
Die life fatigue

Several material models were available in (b) Hot tearing inducator

Cast-Designer for stress calculation, such as
the rigid material, the elastic-plastic material
model and the most complex elastic-visco-
plastic material model. For plastic model, the
working hardening has been considered
carefully. (c) Average normal stress

Both the thermal and mechanical stress has

been calculated. Thanks to the FEM
technology, only one mesh is used for the
thermal, ow and stress simulation.

(d) Actual part with crack (after testing)

(a) Average normal stress (b) Deformation of the casting (c) Distortion

Thermal and mechanical stress simulation of the engine block (sand casting)
Casting Distortion Compensation Solver

Working process of DCS Solver

(a) 3D casting part (b) Displacement after 1 iteration (c) Z displacement after 1 iteration

(d) Displacement tolerance (e) Displacement tolerance after (f) Displacement tolerance after
after 1 iteration 3 iterations 5 iterations

Casting compensation is a common and useful method to correct the casting distortion
after casting, but ask rich experience, and very difcult for complex geometry.

A new Distortion Compensation Solver (DCS) was developed in Cast-Designer based on

the mechanical stress solver. With DCS, the user can simulate the part distortion and
make geometry compensation automatically.

It is an iteration method to nd the best geometry shape. Finally, the adjustment distance
of feature points could be reported and used back to the CAD system.

DCS Result after 5 iterations

Scale x 1 Scale x 2

(a) Part distortion (b) Part distortion (c) Part distortion (d) Part distortion
after 1 iteration after 5 iteration after 1 iteration after 5 iteration

White: Original part; Cyan: After casting of 1 iteration; Red: After casting of 5 iteration
Microstructure Analysis

The formation of microstructures associated

with solid state phase transformation during 226.8

cooling or heat treatment can also be 217.04

Actual test HRB

simulated with Cast-Designer using

models based on Time-Temperature-
Transformation (TTT) or Continuous Hardness (HRB)

Cooling Transformation (CCT) diagrams.

Mechanical properties can then be HRB hardness simulation of SGI
determined from the calculated
microstructure.

Cast-Designer microstructure analysis result

Parallel Computing

Cast-Designer can run jobs in parallel processing. The Cast-Designer DMP solution
(Distributed Memory Parallel) uses the latest available technology, in particular dynamic
domain decomposition and message passing communication.

To reproduce industrial conditions in die casting, thermal cycles are performed to reach
steady state temperatures. While a traditional 1 processor conguration allows the user to
simulate 5 complete die cycles in three hours, a more powerful conguration with up to 16
processors and Inniband interconnect will give the same result in less than 30 minutes!
Cast-Designer Quotation

The quotation module establishes some technical and commercial parameters concerned
with the operation of the casting mould in production. It could be used whatever the
quotation stage for price estimation or the production phase for detail cost control. This
quotation calculator was evaluated by many customers in different casting eld.

The user can customize the currency, alloy, machine and manpower cost, then calculate
the casting cost based on the production rate, volume, manufacture cost, and other
operation cost. Finally a multi-language quotation sheet could be generated in Excel le

Cast-Designer Full Chain Solution

The simulation result of Cast-Designer also could be exported to other CAE system for a
full chain simulation. For example, the porosity and residual stress result of casting process
could be exported to other structure analysis software for part performance analysis or life
time simulation.

Cast-Designer can export the following results: Temperature distribution in any time,
porosity result after the solidication, stress and strain result after the solidication and
cooling, lling factor during the lling process.

Both MSC Nastran and NEI Nastran le format could be exported from Cast-Designer
directly, the porosity result has assigned to different material type and properties during the
data export. For other system, the user can make a very simple user route to read it from
the ASCII CDF format, which has been documented on the Cast-Designer manual.
 CAD

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NO: 20150510-Rev1
About Us
With the combination of software development, advanced analysis,
extensive product development experience and cost effective local
human resources, C3P Engineering Software International Co., Limited
provide industry and manufacturing business with comprehensive
solutions and engineering services on a global basis to meet their
expectation in high quality, on-schedule delivery within cost target. Our
business scope covers software development, professional engineering
service and application software integration.
For more information,
please visit: www.c3p-group.com or www.cast-designer.com

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