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Cooling-Assisted Ultrasonic Grain Refining of Aluminum E380 Die Casting Alloy

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Abstract

Die cast alloys have to be poured at temperatures much higher than their liquidus in order to make the alloys castable. Pouring at a high temperature reduces the formation of dendrites in the shot sleeve which tend to choke the flow at the in-gate but causes increased damage to the shot tooling and dies. Forming globular grains in the shot sleeve is an effective way of breaking the limit of fluidity on reducing the pouring temperature in order to increase die life and to improve the integrity of die casting products. This study investigated the feasibility of producing globular grains in a shot sleeve using a water-cooled ultrasound trough for feeding molten metal into the shot sleeve. Globular grains were obtained using this unique trough. The temperature window within which globular grains can be produced for E380 alloy was determined. Without using the WCUST, the grains in the shot sleeve were fully dendritic and the grain size was about 300 µm. When the molten metal was poured over the WCUST, small globular grains were obtained for the entire pouring temperature window, from 610 °C (1130 °F) to 700 °C (1292 °F), tested in this study. Analysis was made on the conditions for obtaining globular grains. The analysis seems in agreement with experimental results. In addition to producing globular grains for die casting applications, the water-cooled ultrasound trough may be suitable for grain refinement of other gravity casting processes.

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Acknowledgements

This research was sponsored by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) under the Purdue-FCA Partnership Program. Dr. Y. Chen thanks Purdue University for providing a research facility, while he was a visiting scholar at the School of Engineering Technology at Purdue University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stellantis Kokomo Casting Plant, Kokomo, IN, USA

    C. Vian & C. Kuntz

  2. School of Engineering Technology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    C. Kibbey & Q. Han

  3. School of Logistics Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China

    Y. Chen

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  1. C. Vian
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Correspondence to Q. Han.

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Vian, C., Kibbey, C., Chen, Y. et al. Cooling-Assisted Ultrasonic Grain Refining of Aluminum E380 Die Casting Alloy. Inter Metalcast 16, 842–852 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40962-021-00647-y

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