Statistical investigation of the effects of shape, size and superheat on solidification times of castings

The limitations of Chvorinov's Rule for predicting the solidification time of a casting are discussed, along with the many attempts to address these limitations. The efficiency of a new model, recently proposed by the authors, that introduces a shape factor, is investigated along with previous models, to express the effect of shape and size. Compared with Chvorinov's Rule, this model equally or better predicts the solidification times of castings. Also, a statistically designed experiment was developed to examine the effects of shape, size and superheat on total and local solidification times of A356 alloy castings. The regression models and different models from literature are compared for goodness of fit. Again, the new model provided good prediction of the solidification of the castings.