Today, aluminum alloys are increasingly used in mobility applications due to their low density and good property profile. Whenever customers have to change processes (due to an increase in production capacity, cost reduction or reduction in process steps), the quality and costs of the end application must be assessed in advance and the manufacturing and product development cycles must be kept as short as possible. On the one hand, to save development costs, and on the other hand, to achieve maximum flexibility in the ever faster changing markets and to manufacture profitably even in smaller quantities.

These customer requirements, which sometimes demand top-quality castings of special aluminum alloys in very small (1-15 tons per year) or small quantities (15-400 tons per year), are contrasted by usual large-scale industrial casting tonnages of over 100 tons per casting; 100 tons is the usual capacity of a large-scale industrial melting furnace. In order to close this gap between supply and demand, the experts at the LKR Light Metal Competence Center Ranshofen have joined forces with a nearby industrial partner specializing in small batches to create a unique offering:

The objective is to investigate the different influences of essential casting parameters such as cooling water, grain refiner additions, mold type - influence of dual cooling (primary and secondary cooling) - , casting temperature and casting speed by coupling thermodynamic simulations with experimental investigations and to quantitatively determine their effect on microstructure, homogeneity and surface quality. This enables the specification of critical limit values and the associated process-related prediction of the expected material qualities.