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Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 197 (2008) 921932

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Automatic optimal feeder design in steel casting process

Rohallah Tavakoli *, Parviz Davami
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, P.O. Box 11365-9466, Tehran, Iran
Received 12 May 2007; received in revised form 4 July 2007; accepted 12 September 2007
Available online 6 October 2007

Abstract
A method for automatic optimal feeder design in steel casting processes is presented. The initial design is the casting part (without
feeders) which is placed in a suitable mold box. Design of each feeder contains the following steps: determination of the feeder-neck
connection point on the casting surface, initial feeder design, feeder shape optimization and feeder topology optimization. Completing
designing the rst feeder, the method attends to designing the next one, if it is required, and the same procedure will be repeated. In the
presented method, feeders are designed in a descending order of their sizes. The feasibility of the presented method is supported with an
illustrative example.
 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Casting process optimization; Riser design; Shape optimization; Topology optimization

1. Introduction
Since the molten metal shrinks in volume during solidication in the mold cavity, a portion of fresh molten metal
should be fed to make up for the shrinkage. However, since
the fresh molten metal cannot be fed to an isolated nonsolidied metal completely surrounded by solidied metal,
porosity defects such as a cavity and other void regions are
formed therein as a result of shrinkage of the molten metal.
The cavity thus formed is called a shrinkage cavity which is
one of the serious casting defects. Feeders are appended to
the casting to compensate the solidication shrinkage and
providing the directional solidication (from casting to
feeders) so the last solidication points are conducted to
the feeders. The feeders are cut o and recycled after complete solidication. Therefore suitable design of feeding
system (number, position, size and shape of feeders) is a
key for production of sound castings. Further, it is desired
*

Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 21 66164684; fax: +98 21 66036012.

E-mail addresses: tav@mehr.sharif.edu, rohtav@gmail.com (R. Tavakoli), davami@sharif.edu (P. Davami).
URL: http://mehr.sharif.ir/~tav (R. Tavakoli).
0045-7825/$ - see front matter  2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cma.2007.09.018

to reduce volume of feeders for decreasing the production

cost.
In recent years, casting simulation is widely used in
foundry industry for evaluating designs and predicting formation of the shrinkage cavities. The casting modeling systems, which are available for foundry users today, are
software programs which accept a users design and then
analyze the design to make a prediction of the likelihood
of defects. Once an analysis has been completed, the user
views the results of the analysis, and if an area of potential
defect is found within the casting, then the user needs to
make some logical modication in design and repeat the
simulation until the desired result is obtained. Thus, the
traditional trial-and-error design cycle on the foundry oor
has been replaced with trial-and-error on the computer.
But simulation packages are often too tricky to use and
need expertness in CAD and solid modeling as well as
the feeding design principles. Furthermore the resulted
design is not essentially optimal and its quality is function
of the user expertness and patience.
In recent years a number of papers have been published
which report successful use of the numerical optimization methods in the eld of optimal feeder design. The

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R. Tavakoli, P. Davami / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 197 (2008) 921932

outstanding works are Refs. [29,19]. In these works optimal

feeder design is formulated as a shape optimization problem and it is solved with the aid of direct sensitivity analysis
and gradient based minimization methods. Objective function is dened as the feeder volume and the constraints are
dened so the directional solidication along some priori
dened feeding paths is provided. In [11,10,13] authors
used the same approach but with an especial (computationally cheap) nite dierence sensitivity analysis. In [22] medial-axes-based interpolation method (see [21]) is suggested
for solidication analysis to accelerate optimization procedure. The other works related to casting process optimization usually deals with optimization of the boundary
conditions or interfacial heat transfer coecients for satisfying desired target temperature trajectory [33,25] or
desired target solidication path [12,17].
Although the mentioned works show successful application of deterministic optimization procedure for optimal
feeder design but none of them realize automatic feeder
design since they rely on a nearly feasible initial design
(number, position and shape of feeders), also they need
some priori dened feeding paths which is not easy in the
case of 3D geometries.
In the present study a new method for automatic optimal feeder design in steel casting process is presented. This
method takes the casting (without feeder) as an input
geometry and designs its feeders so that the nal design is
free from the shrinkage defects (or remained defects are
smaller than a dened threshold). Conceptual feeder design
principles and user contribution can be easily included in
the presented method. Another feature of the presented
method is ecient numerical implementation which makes
it become a feasible design tool for real world cases.
2. Mathematical and numerical modeling of casting
solidication
From a macroscopic point of view, if eect of the melt
ow during solidication is neglected, solidication is governed by a non-linear heat conduction equation with phase
change. There are several methods for solution of this
equation (for good survey see [8,14]). Selection between
these methods is function of desired accuracy and available
computational resource. As the numerical optimization is
an iterative procedure, ecient numerical method with reasonable accuracy is more desirable. In [28] an stable explicit
nite dierence method for solution of conduction dominated phase change problems was presented. The computational cost of this method is same as an explicit method
(per time step) while it is free from the time step limitation
due to stability criteria. In [27] this phase change solver is
extended for simulation of real world casting solidication
and its eciency is increased with including a domain
decomposition method. For brevity of presentation we
refer interested readers to Refs. [27,28] for more details
about mathematical and numerical modeling of casting
solidication used in the present study.

3. Solidication induced defect prediction

As mentioned in Section 1, the main purpose of feeder
design is producing defect-free castings (particularly free
from macro shrinkages). So prediction of solidication
defects with a reasonable accuracy is an important phase
in this study.
3.1. Macroscopic shrinkage prediction
There are generally three types of numerical models that
can be employed to predict macroporosity formation in
metals due to solidication shrinkage. The rst one [18]
involves solution of the full system of hydrodynamic equations (Navier-Stokes equations coupled with energy equation). Although this model is an accurate tool to study
the porosity formation phenomena, it may be computationally costly because at each time step the numerical
algorithm involves complete solution of the momentum
and energy equations. In the second model [1,2], the full
system of hydrodynamic equations are solved in conjunction with ALE method for direct tracking of liquid metal
free surface. The thermo-mechanical behavior of mushy
zone and solid region are also included for accurate prediction of shrinkage cavity. As same as the former approach
this model suers from high computational cost, therefore
it is not suitable for our purpose.
The third model, simplied shrinkage model [9], is based
on solution of the energy equations without solution of the
uid ow equations. Porosity is predicted by evaluating the
volume of solidication shrinkage in each isolated liquid
region in the casting at each time step. This volume is then
subtracted from the top of the liquid region in accordance
with the amount of liquid metal available in the cells from
which the uid is removed. The top of a liquid region is
dened by the direction of gravity and the free surface of
liquid in each isolated region is assumed to be horizontal.
The relevance of this approach is supported by the fact that
in many situations uid ow in the solidifying metal can be
ignored. Therefore, porosity formation is governed by
metal cooling and gravity eect. The permeability-limit of
the liquid metal among the mushy zone can be easily incorporated in this model. The implementation of this model
based on Ref. [9] is used in the present study. Since in this
model, the most portion of CPU time is consumed for
marking isolated liquid regions, a new isolated liquid
region marking algorithm based on the fast marching
method [24] is introduced in the present study (see Appendix A).
3.2. Microscopic shrinkage prediction
Micro shrinkage defects are another issue that should be
considered in feeder design, especially for alloys with a
large solidication interval. In Niyama et al. [20] presented
a simple measure for prediction of micro shrinkages in steel
casting processes. The Niyama criterion is dened as

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923

p
G= R, where G is the temperature gradient and R is the
cooling rate at the end of solidication (solidus temperature). Based on Niyama results, at any point of casting that
the Niyama criterion is below a critical threshold the micro
p
shrinkage defects are occurred. The critical value of G= R
is function of alloy composition (775 K1/2 s1/2 m1 in
Niyama report for some type of steel alloys). Solution of
the energy equation is sucient for evaluation of this criterion, so it does not impose considerable additional cost.
Therefore it is suitable for our purpose. Nowadays Niyamas criterion is widely used in commercial packages to
predict micro shrinkages.
4. Automatic optimal feeder design
In this section we present our approach for automatic
optimal feeder design in steel casting processes. The presented method in this study includes the following main
steps: (1) initialization, (2) defect prediction, (3) defect distribution and nding suitable location of the feeder-neck
connection, (4) feeder and feeder-neck design, (5) shape
optimization of the added feeder, (6) topology optimization of the added feeder (if it is desired), (7) going to step
2 and repeat the same procedure until the remained defects
in the casting become below a dened threshold (or other
dened stopping criteria are met).
If there is only one major hot spot inside a casting, the
feeder should be connected to the casting face closest to
the hot spot. Two or more isolated hot spots located far
apart will require multiple feeders, one for each hot spot.
If there are several hot spots, with dierent solidication
times, the feeder can be rst designed for the hottest one,
followed by analysis to verify if the same feeder can also
feed any other hot spots. Then a feeder is designed for
the next largest hot spot, and so on [23]. The defect distribution step is used in the present study to indicate location
of feeder-neck connection. This step is essential when we
have multiple hot spots with dierent solidication times.
Principles mentioned above are automatically taken into
account in the presented algorithm, i.e., the rst feeder is
the biggest one which is designed for the heaviest part of
the casting with maximum shrinkage defects. In the same
manner, the second designed feeder is the second rank biggest feeder and nally the last designed feeder is the smallest one. In this method, it is assumed that the smaller
feeders do not have considerable eects on the solidication condition of their corresponding bigger feeders (feeders that are designed former). This is a feasible
assumption when the original casting needs some feeders
with various dimensions, or when multiple feeders with
approximately the same size are needed in which these
feeders have not considerable eects on the solidication
condition of each other (e.g. there are some light sections
between heavy sections of the casting). If this assumption
is not feasible, the nal design is not essentially optimal
(see Section 5) and it may be sub-optimal (not that the nal
design produces the sound casting).

Fig. 1. Flowchart of automatic optimal feeder design procedure.

Overall owchart of the presented method is shown in

Fig. 1. In the following subsections the above steps are discussed in details.
4.1. Initialization
In this step casting geometry (without feeder), physical
properties and boundary condition are indicated by user.
Then the input geometry is embedded in a suitable mold
box and the mold box (includes the casting) is discretized
with a uniform Cartesian grid based on a user dened mesh
size. Henceforth each Cartesian grid is called as voxel in the
current study. The opensource grid generator CartGen [26]
is used in the present study for this purpose. After voxelization, we have a three-dimensional array, F, that stores type
voxels (instead of the CAD geometry). In the present study
we have two voxel types: cast voxel, F 1 and mold voxel
F 0. The mold-box dimension is selected so that the casting has at least a minimum distance, lmin , from the mold surfaces. The value of lmin , is a user dened parameter that is
formally selected based on the casting weight and/or the
maximum casting thickness. The voxel size should be
selected based on the geometry complexity of casting (and
usually experience of the user). Small voxel size leads to
high computational cost and large voxel size leads to inaccuracy of procedure. Note that during optimization procedure the mold box is resized (due to addition of the feeders)
and so the total number of voxels is gradually increased.
Another task in the initialization step is denition of surface design space. The surface design space, Cdesign , is dened
as a subset of the casting surface, Ccast , which is feasible for
connection of the feeder-necks. As a general rule, connection
of the feeder-neck to the cast surfaces with small absolute
value of the curvature is desirable. Particularly connection
of the feeder-neck to concave surfaces (surfaces with negative curvatures) should be prevented as much as possible

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R. Tavakoli, P. Davami / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 197 (2008) 921932

(consider fettling, cutting and machining procedures that are

usually required after casting). The surface curvature can be
extracted from the CAD model with the following relation:
n
1
jr ;
jnj
where j is the local curvature and n is the local outward
normal vector on the cast surface. Note that in practical
applications more complex surface geometric reasoning is
essential for suitable denition of Cdesign . So using a smart
geometric reasoning module is essential for consistent definition of Cdesign . To generate a practically feasible design, it
is possible to benet from user contribution for denition
of Cdesign . In this manner user can exclude some infeasible
surfaces form Cdesign .
In the voxelized geometry, Cdesign is the list of surface
voxels that have non-empty subscription with Cdesign . The
surface voxels are those cast voxels that have at least one
mold voxel in their neighborhood. In the present study
two voxels are called as the neighbor voxels when they have
a shared face.
4.2. Defect prediction
In this stage the defect eld in the casting (original casting + added feeders, if some feeders are added in previous
cycles) is determined by solution of the energy equation in
conjunction with the macroscopic or microscopic defect
prediction methods.
4.3. Defect distribution
One of the main important steps during feeder design is
selection of a suitable point on the casting surface to connect
the feeder-neck. If there is only one major hot spot inside the
casting, selection of the hottest point (or point with maximum local solidication time) on the casting surface which
is member of Cdesign is a feasible choice. But when we have
two or more isolated hot spots with dierent solidication
times, automatic selection of feeder-neck connection point
is very dicult. For this purpose we smooth and distribute
the defect eld in the cast volume so that their eects are
transmitted to the cast surfaces in a suitable manner. The
applied defect eld in this step is one of the predicted defect
eld types: macroscopic or microscopic (type is a user
selected parameter). The following Helmhotlz-like equation
is used to distribute defect eld in the present study:
D er  lrD d in Xcast ;
rD  ^
n 0 on oXcast ;

where d is the predicted defect eld, D is the distributed

(and smoothed) defect eld, e > 0 is a scaler that controls
the length scale of diusion (e 1 in this study), l is the
spatially variable defect diusion coecient and Xcast is a
portion of the spatial domain contains only the original
casting (without feeder). Note that we dont like isotropic
distribution of defects in the cast media, but we prefer to

have more defect diusion to warmer parts and less defect

diusion to colder parts. For this purpose the defect diusion coecient, l, is selected based on the local solidication time. In the present study l is equal to local
solidication time. Note that when we use the reduced
shrinkage model to predict the macroscopic defects, their
eects are usually (not always) appeared in the casting surface, but there is not sucient contrast between surface
points to select the feeder-neck connection point. Solution
of (2) not only transfers eect of internal defects to the casting surfaces in a consistent manner, but also provide sucient contrast between surface points for selection of the
feeder-neck connection point.
Same as the energy equation, (2) is solved with the nite
dierence method in the present study. The traditional central nite dierence scheme is used to discretize diusion
terms in (2). Since accurate solution of (2) is not essential
for our purpose, we use 100 symmetric successive overrelaxation (SSOR) iterations with over-relaxation factor
x 1:5 to solve (2).
After computation of the distributed defect eld, it is
multiplied with the scaling factor S d . The scaling parameter
S d is selected so that the maximum values of D and d
become the same. Finally a cast surface voxel with the largest value of defect (based on the distributed defect eld, D)
which is member of Cdesign is selected as the feeder-neck
connection point.
4.4. Feeder and feeder-neck design
After determination of the feeder-neck connection
point a suitable feeder (with its corresponding neck)
should be designed and connected to the cast surface. This
step is performed by using the conceptual feeder design
principles and computer geometric reasoning. The user
contribution can be included in this step to provide the
better design.
Depending on the position, feeders may be classied as
top and side. The top feeders are placed above the hot spot,
whereas the side feeders are placed at the side of the hot
spot, usually at the parting line. A top feeder is more eective because of the additional eect of gravity. In the present study based on unit normal vector ^n at the connection
point of feeder-neck, the type of feeder is indicated.
Another selective parameter of feeder is the feeder
shape. Fig. 2 shows the commonly used feeder shapes in
practical applications. Taller feeders are used for steel castings (e.g., for cylindrical feeders H =D 2, where H and D
are height and diameter of cylinder, respectively), which
exhibit shrinkage pipe, whereas in iron and aluminum castings, H =D can be about 1.5. Note that with application of
the exothermic or insulating sleeves it is possible to reduce
feeder height. For small castings, cylindrical feeders are
widely used. For larger castings, cylindrical feeders with
spherical bottom (side location) or spherical top (top position, blind type) are widely used [23]. Initial shape of feeder
is a user dened parameter in the present study.

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925

Fig. 2. Commonly used feeder shapes: cylindrical, tapered, rectangular, spherical bottom, spherical top and cruciform [23].

The shape of the feeder-neck depends on the feeder

shape, feeder position and the connected portion of the
casting. The most widely used neck shapes are cylindrical
(for top cylindrical feeders) and rectangular (mainly for
side feeders). The neck may be tapered down towards the
casting [23]. In the present study the feeder-neck shape is
automatically indicated based on the feeder shape and type
and connection point position. After determination of the
feeder dimensions, the dimensions of the feeder-neck are
computed based on the available conceptual design rules
(e.g. see [3,57,23]).
Indication of feeder dimensions is one of the main
important parts of this step. Although it is not any limitation for determination of feeder dimensions in this study,
but its suitable selection has considerable eect on improving eciency of the presented method. For this purpose we
modify the conceptual design principles based on the
Chvorinov rule for casting solidication time. Based on
the Chvorinov rule the solidication time of the casting is
approximated from the following relation:
 2
Vc
2
tf BM c
;
3
Ac
where tf is the casting solidication time, B is the mould
constant, M c is the geometrical modulus of casting, V c is
casting volume and Ac is the surface area trough it heat is
lost. The constant parameter B can be easily computed
with some numerical experiments. For this purpose it is
sucient to simulate solidication of some priori designed
parts with known geometric modulus (e.g. box, cylinder or
sphere) and after determination of their solidication
times, calculate B form (3). As the feeder should be solidied later than the casting it is formal to select geometrical
modulus of feeder, M f equal to 1:2 M c (for heavy sections
steel casting M f 1:4 M c is recommended). Since in the
current study the casting solidication time (local solidication time of warmer hot spot) is known from simulation
result the feeder modulus is indicated from the following
relation:
r
tf
M f 1:2
:
4
B
The dimensions of the feeder are determined based on the
feeder modulus and shape.
After determination of the feeder specications some
geometric reasoning is essential before connection of feeder

to its selected connection point (particularly for complex

castings). For example, undesirable intersection of feeder
with casting should be checked. Also the connection point
should be suciently smooth and has adequate area to
connect the feeder. When some of these criteria are not satised the connection point should be moved to the nearest
suitable point.
4.5. Feeder shape optimization
In this step, shape of the last added feeder is optimized
with a simple gradient search method. Note that when we
have some designed feeders from the previous optimization
cycles, their shapes are xed during this step. This step has
a sub-iteration cycle that in which the feeder length scale is
modied. The sub-iteration is exploited so that the feeder
volume is minimized and the distributed defect value at
the connection point of feeder-neck become below a specied threshold at the end of iterations. Therefore after each
feeder modication, the energy equation is solved and
remained defects in the casting are predicted. Then the
defect distribution equation is solved and after scaling
D-eld with S d the value of defect in the feeder-neck connection point is evaluated. The length scale of feeder is
one of the feeder dimensions that based on this dimension
other dimensions of feeder are determined. As an example
for a cylindrical feeder with known H =D ratio, the feeder
length scale is either H or D. If Li denotes the length scale
of feeder at sub-iteration ith the new value of this parameter at sub-iteration (i + 1)th is determined by the following
equation:
Li1 Li ai DLi ;

where ai 1 or 1 is the search direction and DLi is step

size of modication. The value of ai and DLi can be computed based on the traditional one-dimensional line search
methods. But in the present study a simple heuristic search
method is used. In this method when S d D is larger than the
desired threshold at the feeder-neck connection point, we
take ai 1 and in the other hand ai is taken equal to 1.
The step size DLi is taken equal to 0.10.2 Li in this study
(is reduced during iterations).
When the feeder topology optimization (next step) is
used after feeder shape optimization, the task of this step
can be simplied. In this manner it is only sucient to
design the feeder so that the S d D is smaller than the desired

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R. Tavakoli, P. Davami / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 197 (2008) 921932

threshold at the feeder-neck connection point, without

attention to minimization of feeder volume. So always
a 1 and we have usually an over-estimated design. This
not only increase eciency of this step (and also simplify
its implementation) but also gives more exibility to the
feeder topology optimization step to nd the better feeder
topology.

4.6. Feeder topology optimization

In this step topology of the last designed feeder is
improved by an evolutionary topology optimization algorithm (see Fig. 3). Same as the previous step, it has an iterative procedure too.
At each iteration of this step, N remove RRN feeder voxels
of feeder is removed based on their performance-index,
where N feeder is the number of feeder voxels and
0 < RR < 1 is the rejection ratio.
For this purpose at each cycle, the energy equation (and
also defect prediction and defect distribution) is solved and
feeder voxels are sorted based on descending order of their
performance-index. Then, the last N remove voxels of the
sorted list are removed from feeder voxels (their F value
is converted to 0). The iterations in this step are continued
until the value of S d D become larger than the specied
threshold. When undesired defect value is appeared at the
feeder-neck connection point, the feeder topology in the
previous iteration is taken as the optimal topology or
the last iteration is repeated with a smaller value of RR.

Fig. 3. Flowchart
procedure.

of

evolutionary feeder

In the present study the parameter RR is decreased gradually during iterations.

Since with decreasing the local solidication time of feeder voxels their performance is decreased, so in the present
study the performance-index of each voxel in dened as its
local solidication time.
This removal algorithm is similar with the evolutionary
structural optimization (ESO) methods which are successfully applied for topology optimization of compliance
mechanics [30,31] and heat transfer [15,16]. Although there
is not theoretical support for optimality of ESO methods
but numerical experiments conrmed usefulness of these
methods (e.g. see [31]).

5. Limitations
As previously mentioned, the presented method designs
the biggest feeder at rst and continues to design the smallest one. In this manner design of later feeders are aected
by presence of the former feeders, but the later feeders have
not any eect on former feeders design. Note that such
strategy is the magic of the presented method to select suitable feeder positions when multiple feeders with variable
sizes are needed. On the other hand when multiple feeders
with approximately the same sizes are needed, result of the
presented algorithm is not essentially optimal. In this situation, undesired feeder patterns may be formed or number
of feeders in the nal design may be higher than what is
needed.
For example consider feeder design of a cylindrical ring.
The rst feeder is designed on an arbitrary point of the ring
surface (top or side based on ring cross section geometry,
consider symmetry of ring). In the cylindrical coordinate,
(r, h, z), we take (r, 0, z) as the spatial position of feeder
connection point to the cast. The second feeder-neck connection point will be (r, p, z). For the third and forth ones,
this points will be (r, p/2, z) or (r, 3p/4, z) with high degree
of probability. So if number of feeders in the real optimal
solution is 2n , n 0; 1; 2; . . ., the presented method leads
to an optimal design. In other cases it takes higher number
of feeders, so its result is sub-optimal. As an other example
consider feeder design for a horizontal plate. In this case
the presented algorithm put the rst feeder at the center
of plate with high degree of probability. Therefore the pre-

topology optimization
Fig. 4. 3D conguration of the test case used in the present study.

R. Tavakoli, P. Davami / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 197 (2008) 921932

sented method can not design feeders so that we have four

feeders with a symmetric pattern.
To improve such undesirable behaviors, it is possible to
use a gradient base optimization algorithm (in conjunction
with the nite dierence sensitivity analysis) to optimize
number and location of feeders in the nal design. In fact,
result of the presented method can be used as an initial
guess for gradient based optimization methods (e.g. see
[11,10]).

927

6. Result and discussion

In this section we present an example to illustrate potential of the presented method for automatic optimal feeder
design in the sandmold steel casting process. Fig. 4 shows
the conguration of casting which is used in this numerical
experiment (longer dimension is equal to 95 cm). Note that
this casting is designed so that it needs multiple feeders
with dierent dimensions.

Fig. 5. Variation of shape and topology of feeders during optimization in conjunction with contour plot of local solidication time (in minute), complete
conguration (right) and selected section (left): (a) original casting, (b) after shape optimization of the rst feeder, (c) after topology optimization of the
rst feeder, (d) after shape optimization of the second feeder.

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R. Tavakoli, P. Davami / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 197 (2008) 921932

In this example we take the casting alloy as a carbon steel

that its physical properties are as follows: thermal conductivity k = 33.44 W/m C, density of solid phase at the solidus
3
temperature qsol
s 7300 kg=m , density of liquid phase at
liq
the liquidus temperature ql 6935 kg=m3 , density of the
liquid phase at pouring temperature qpour
6826 kg=m3 ,
l
heat capacity cp = 627 J/kg C, latent heat of fusion
Hf = 270 kJ/kg and pouring temperature hc0 1621  C. It
is assumed that the density of metal in liquid state and mushy
zone is varied linearly as a function of temperature and also
variation of the solid fraction with temperature is linear in

the mushy zone. The physical properties of applied sand

mold are: thermal conductivity k = 0.7 W/m C, density
q = 1500 kg/m3, heat capacity cp = 1128 J/kg C and initial
temperature hm0 20  C. The other applied physical
properties are: ambient temperature h1 = 20 C, airmold
interfacial heat transfer coecient h1 = 75 W/m2 C and
castmold interfacial heat transfer coecient hi = r
418 W/m2 C, where r is equal to 1.0, 0.8 and 0.6 for bottom,
lateral and top surfaces respectively. The parameter r is
obtained from our numerical simulation in conjunction with
practical experiments.

Fig. 6. Variation of shape and topology of feeders during optimization in conjunction with contour plot of local solidication time (in minute), complete
conguration (right) and selected section (left): (a) after topology optimization of the second feeder, (b) after shape optimization of the third feeder and
(c) after topology optimization of the third feeder.

R. Tavakoli, P. Davami / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 197 (2008) 921932

The feeders are assumed to be cylindrical with

H =D 1:5 in this experiment. In this example the macroscopic defects are only taken into account. The admissible
defect threshold is taken equal to 0.5% (defect = 100 void
volume fraction after complete solidication). The rejection ratio parameter (RR) is taken equal to 0.125 at rst
iteration of feeder topology optimization and it is gradually
decreased by multiplication with factor 0.7 after each
iterations.

929

In this numerical experiments the proposed domain

decomposition method in [27] is used to accelerate
simulation and Dtmold 10Dtcast . The Fourier number 1 is
taken into account for cast media (equivalent with
Dtcast 6Dtexplicit
). The voxel size is 7 mm in this expericast
ment. As the computing platform we have used a personal
computer with an Intel 2400 MHz CPU and 2 GB RAM.
Figs. 5 and 6 show variation of shape and topology of
feeders and contour plot of local solidication time during

Fig. 7. Contour plot of distributed defect eld during optimization (in percent): (a) original casting, (b) after shape optimization of the rst feeder, (c) after
topology optimization of the rst feeder, (d) after shape optimization of the second feeder, (e) after topology optimization of the second feeder, (f) after
shape optimization of the third feeder and (g) after topology optimization of the third feeder.

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R. Tavakoli, P. Davami / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 197 (2008) 921932

optimization procedure (original casting to nal optimal

design). Fig. 7 shows contour plot of distributed defect eld
during optimization. Fig. 8 shows contour plot of metal
fraction after complete solidication during optimization
procedure. Plot shows success of the presented method
for nding suitable location of feeders and their automatic
design, so the nal design is free from shrinkages defects.
Fig. 8 shows that the feeder topology optimization not only

decreases the feeder volume but also reduces height of

shrinkage pipe. Therefore it makes possible to use feeders
with smaller height.
The total voxels in the nal design are 1124370 voxels
and number of cast voxels in the nal design is 250183.
The casting yield in the nal design is about 50%. The total
CPU time of this numerical experiment is about 70 min.
The total number of solidication analysis was 22 times.

Fig. 8. Contour plot of metal fraction eld during optimization (the zero value represents the macro shrinkage): (a) original casting, (b) after shape
optimization of the rst feeder, (c) after topology optimization of the rst feeder, (d) after shape optimization of the second feeder, (e) after topology
optimization of the second feeder, (f) after shape optimization of the third feeder and (g) after topology optimization of the third feeder.

R. Tavakoli, P. Davami / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 197 (2008) 921932

7. Conclusions
A method for automatic optimal feeder design in steel
casting process is presented. The initial design is a casting
placed in a suitable mold box. It automatically design feeders
in a descending order of sizes so the nal design is free from
solidication defects. Success of the presented method was
supported with an illustrative example. Enrichment of the
presented method with some smart geometric reasoning
modules makes it possible to use it in real world applications.
Appendix A. Isolated liquid region numbering
As discussed in Section 3, to predict macro shrinkages, it
is essential to track isolated liquid regions at each time step.
An isolated liquid region is dened as the region of molten
metal which is bounded by the mold walls and/or melt free
surface and/or solidied metal. Since the macroscopic uidity of the molten metal exist in the region where the solid
fraction ratio, fs , is less than a critical value fcr (0.67 in this
study), the metal voxels that their solid fraction ratio are
higher than fcr are considered as the solidied metal. Note
that at the start of solidication we have only one liquid
region but during solidication dynamics, this region may
be divided into multiple isolated regions (see Fig. 9).
If nliq denotes the number of liquid voxels fs < fcr at
each time step, a crude implementation of liquid region
numbering algorithm leads to an On2liq algorithm which
is severely CPU intensive. In [4] an isolated liquid region
numbering algorithm is presented based on solution of
the Poisson equation. This method was used for marking
isolated gas bubble regions during numerical simulation
of free surface ow. This algorithm needs solution of one
Poisson equation to determine each isolated liquid region,
so this algorithm is not suitable for our purpose. In this section we present a simple and ecient algorithm for numbering of isolated liquid regions.

931

Given a new liquid domain Xnliq at time level n, the task

of isolated liquid region numbering is nding isolated
liquid regions Lni ; i 1; 2; . . . ; nreg (where nreg is number
regions). For this purpose we dene three additional quantities for each liquid voxel, they are: color eld to store
corresponding region number, ag eld to indicate visited
liquid voxels and index array to store index of visited
liquid voxels. In our computer implementation all arrays
are stored in the vectorized format. In this format each
i; j; k position in the three-dimensional voxelized geometry is mapped to its corresponding position in a one-dimensional array. Therefore we have one integer index for
determination of each voxel position. The following algorithm shows the isolated liquid cell numbering procedure
which is used in the present study.
Algorithm 1
nreg 0;
Initialize the color eld to zero for all liquid voxels;
Initialize the flag eld to zero for all liquid voxels;
Search in the liquid voxels list and nd the rst un-colored liquid voxel colori; j; k 0:
(a) nvisit 0, where nvisit is the number of visited liquid
voxels during stage 4;
(b) nreg nreg 1, nvisit nvisit 1;
(c) Set flagi; j; k 1 and add index i; j; k to the end
of index-array;
(d) for all members of the index-array (at rst has one
member but its members increase dynamically):
i. color nreg ;
ii. search on its six nearest neighbors and for each
neighbor that its color and flag has zero value
do the following steps:
A. flag 1, nvisit nvisit 1;
B. add its index to the end of index-array;
5. go to step 3 and repeat procedure until all liquid voxels
has the non-zero color value.
1.
2.
3.
4.

Note that number of jumping from step 5 to stage 3 is

equal to number of isolated liquid regions. So in the worst
case, the complexity of the presented algorithm is
Onreg nliq . This algorithm has close similarity with the
O(n) fast marching method [32] used for solution of eikonal
equation.
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Fig. 9. Dynamics of the isolated liquid regions during solidication:

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