Simulation of Microstructure-based Mechanical Behaviour of Cast Components

Abstract: In the process of developing cast iron and cast aluminium components, a high level of co-operation between product development and production is of great importance. From an engineering standpoint, this co-operation is limited early in the product development phase by e.g. a lack of established methods for the consideration of local variations in the mechanical behaviour of a finished component.This thesis aims to increase the possibilities for co-operation between product development and production during the product realisation process by introducing and studying the use of predicted local mechanical behaviour in structural analyses of cast components. A literature review of existing simulation methods and a work on characterisation of mechanical behaviour from microstructural features have been performed to identify important knowledge gaps. A simulation strategy has been formulated which is able to predict local mechanical behaviour throughout the entire component, and to incorporate this into a Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation of the structural behaviour of the component. In the simulation strategy, componentspecific microstructure-based mechanical behaviour is predicted using a casting process simulation. A computer program was developed to create FEM material definitions which capture the local variations in mechanical behaviour throughout the component. Using a material reduction technique, the local mechanical behaviour can be incorporated without increasing the FEM simulation time.The relevance of the simulation strategy was experimentally verified on cast aluminium samples, where the strain field was observed using Digital Image Correlation (DIC). It was found that the local variations in mechanical behaviour cause a stress-strain distribution that deviates from that predicted by a homogeneous material description, indicating the importance of calculating with and including such variations in material behaviour in FEM simulations. Numerical investigations demonstrate the strategy’s relevance for predicting the behaviour of cast aluminium and ductile iron components.