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Investigation of the Foundry Properties of the Locally Available Sands for Metal Casting

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Abstract

Utilization of locally available sands for building moulds for sand casting will reduce the production cost and time as compared to procured sands. In the present study, the foundry properties of the locally available sands namely, mined silica river and beach sands have been investigated to check their suitability for metal casting. Different physical and mechanical tests were conducted on the chosen sand samples. Aluminium alloy was cast in all mould types and its cast properties such as volumetric porosity and surface roughness (SR) i.e. Ra value were determined for comparison. The foundry test results showed that the beach sand was the finest possessing highest grain fineness number (GFN) of 64 and the mined silica sand was the roughest, possessing lowest GFN of 44 among all sand samples. The pH value of all the sands was more than 7 which represents their good bonding ability with the binder. The mould’s permeability and strengths was found to decrease and increase with rise of 5–30% clay content in all cases. The mined silica sand mould demonstrated highest permeability in contrast to other sand moulds. The Al-Si alloy castings obtained from the mined sand mould exhibited minimum porosity with acceptable surface roughness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, VSSUT, Odisha, Burla, India

    Prafulla Kumar Sahoo, Sarojrani Pattnaik & Mihir Kumar Sutar

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  1. Prafulla Kumar Sahoo
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  2. Sarojrani Pattnaik
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  3. Mihir Kumar Sutar
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Correspondence to Sarojrani Pattnaik.

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Sahoo, P.K., Pattnaik, S. & Sutar, M.K. Investigation of the Foundry Properties of the Locally Available Sands for Metal Casting. Silicon 13, 3765–3775 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-020-00677-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-020-00677-x

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