موضوع: Casting Technology الثلاثاء 10 مايو 2011 - 22:45
Brian Cantor and Keyna O'Reilly The editors would like to thank the following: the Oxford-Kobe Institute Committee and St Catherine's College, Oxford University, for agreeing to support the Oxford-Kobe Materials Seminar on Solidification and Casting; Lord Plant, Sir Peter Williams, Professor Itsuo Ohnaka and Drs Lincon Wallen, Helen Mardon and Kaizaburo Saito for help in organizing the Seminar; and Ms Pippa Gordon and Ms Sophie Briant for help with preparing the manuscripts. Individual authors would like to make additional acknowledgements as follows. INDUSTRIAL PERSPECTIVE Casting technology is developing rapidly, driven by a combination of improvements in understanding of underlying solidification theory, increased computer capacity for design simulation and on-line control, and enhanced industrial competition in increasingly globalized world markets. Wrought products are often dominated by the quality and yield of primary solidification of ingot and billet feedstock. Moreover, many industrial sectors are developing rapid prototyping and agile manufacturing processes to reduce time to market and speed up responsiveness to customer demands. Casting has much to offer as a near net shape technology, but important issues of reproducibility and quality need to be improved. The overall industrial perspective on casting technology is discussed in this section, concentrating on recent innovations and challenges for the future. Chapters 1 and 2 discuss respectively semi-continuous and continuous methods of casting aluminium alloys, and chapter 3 discusses continuous casting of steel. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss different aspects of the importance of casting in the important automotive sector. Chapter 1 Direct chill billet casting of aluminium alloys Martin Jarrett, Bill Neilson and Estelle Manson- Whitton Introduction This chapter details the operational and technological developments of the direct chill (DC) casting process for a high volume commercial extrusion business. Other continuous casting processes are discussed in chapters 2 and 3. Modelling of DC casting is discussed in chapter 6. Improved extrusion manufacturing efficiency is driving the need for better and more consistent billet quality. This has necessitated significant technological and process development of DC billet production, in order to produce extrusion ingots of predictable performance. A thorough understanding is required of the interaction of the equipment and process technologies that impact on the metallurgical macro- and microstructure of the DC cast ingot, and its subsequent performance in the extrusion process. The first commercial semi-continuous casting machine for aluminium alloys was opened in Germany in 1936, following development of vertical continuous casting techniques for other metals, such as lead, since the mid-nineteenth century [1]. Over the past 50 years, the DC casting process has been developed to become the predominant process for extrusion billet production [2, 3], with 6xxx alloy extrusion billet accounting for a large percentage of the throughput of worldwide aluminium DC casting production. Together with market driven advancement, environmental considerations are driving significant change in DC casting technology. The provision of consistent high quality DC cast billets of predictable performance is of fundamental importance in operating extrusion presses at maximum efficiency, while meeting the stringent quality requirements of the market place