Investigation of the Quality of Flywheel SG Iron Sand Casting Using the Optimized Riser Dimensions: Numerical Simulation and Experimental Validation

The primary objective of this investigation is to employ computational simulation analysis of casting to determine effective riser dimensions and eliminate shrinkage porosity in actual spheroidal graphite (SG) iron flywheel casting. A simulation software, Pro-CAST, is used to simulate the solidification process under varying process conditions (i.e., without a riser and with an effective dimension riser). The simulation results are then confirmed by a subsequent experiment using green sand casting. Additionally, a thorough investigation is conducted to determine the correlation between the shrinkage behavior and its morphological characteristics of the cast components. The simulation results infer that the un-optimized dimension of the riser causes the shrinkage porosity and void formation largely in the thicker section, due to the lower eutectic solidification time. However, when the dimension of the riser is optimized, this effect is mitigated simply by ensuring the eutectic solidification time is higher than the eutectic solidification of the thicker section; thus, the mold is completely filled with no shrinkage porosity or void formation. It is evident that there is a good agreement between simulation and experiment when comparing the resulting appearance of components in simulations and experiments.