CASE STUDY 203

Computer simulation of casting process

of aluminium wheels – a case study
Yeh-Liang Hsu* and Chia-Chieh Yu
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan, Republic of China
The manuscript was received on 9 May 2005 and was accepted after revision for publication on 20 October 2005.

DOI: 10.1243/09544054JEM381

Abstract: Aluminium disc wheels intended for normal use in passenger cars are commonly
produced by gravity casting. If the cooling process and the initial temperature of the mould
are not well controlled, shrinkage cavity will occur after solidification, causing leakage in
the disc wheel. In this research, a casting simulation software is used to simulate the
casting process of aluminium wheels. The casting simulation is done iteratively until the
mould temperature converges to a stable temperature. A ‘shrinkage index’ (SI) is defined to
provide a quantified index of casting quality of aluminium wheels, based on the
phenomenon of liquid entrapped at the joints of rim and spokes of the wheel where
shrinkage cavity usually happens. This shrinkage index shows good correlation with the
aluminium wheel leakage test results. This paper also discusses the influence of cooling
process parameters on SI, including initial mould temperature, and geometry of the wheel,
which verifies engineers’ empirical data. This iterative simulation process and SI can be used
to predict the casting quality of aluminium wheels and to find the optimal parameters of the
casting process.

Keywords: aluminium disc wheels, casting, shrinkage cavity, liquid entrapped

1 INTRODUCTION To improve the quality of foundry products

Aluminium disc wheels intended for normal use on
passenger cars are commonly produced by gravity
casting. Figure 1 shows the four casting moulds –
top mould, side mould, bottom mould, and support
mould – for an aluminium disc wheel. The cooling
conditions are applied to the moulds. If the cooling
process and the initial temperatures of moulds are
not well controlled, shrinkage cavity can occur after
solidification, causing leakage in the disc wheel.
Several practical strategies are often employed to
prevent this. These include drilling air vessels to
increase the rate of heat transferred from the joints
of rim and spokes of the wheel, and spraying vapour
on the bottom mould to increase the cooling rate.
In aluminium wheel manufacturing, these strategies
are applied currently on a ‘trial-and-error’ basis, and
depend heavily on the experience of engineers.
*Corresponding author: Department of Mechanical Engineer-
ing, Yuan Ze University, 135 Yuan Tung Road, Chungli,
Taiwan, Republic of China. email: mehsu@saturn.yzu.edu.tw
has long been a research issue in manufacturing
industry. Numerical models are developed to predict
the mechanical characteristics, shrinkages, and
porosities. The casting process and the effective
parameters are carefully studied to address the
improvement schemes.
Tiwari and Roy [1] used neural networks to build
an intelligent shrinkage minimization module,
which learns the real behaviour of the solidification
process so that it can perform the task of casting
design feature modification in real time and
intensify the process of directional solidification.
Seetharamu et al. [2] used the finite element method
to simulate the heat transfer process accompanying
the solidification process. The results of residual
stresses, shrinkage, and thermal stresses were com-
pared with available experimental data. Bounds
et al. [3] modelled the formation of macro defects,
macro porosity, mis-runs, and pipe shrinkage, expli-
citly as a function of the interaction among free-
surface fluid flow, heat transfer, and solidification
in arbitrarily complex three-dimensional geo-
metries. Midea et al. [4] illustrated four examples

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204 Yeh-Liang Hsu and Chia-Chieh Yu
in which casting process modelling is combined with
other computer modelling to optimize cast com-
ponent manufacturability. Shenefelt et al. [5] used
‘criteria functions (CFs)’ based on thermal environ-
ment to provide a means for estimating shrinkage
porosity within a casting.
In particular, the use of mould filling and solid-
ification commercial simulation software to investi-
gate the filling patterns, velocities, and temperature
distributions, has become increasingly popular.
Spittle et al. [6] used MAVIS, a heat transfer/
solidification simulation package, to predict the
temperature distributions in a permanent mould.
Drezet et al. [7] analysed a nominal ingot using
the finite element software ABAQUS to compare
two different casting speeds and free mould designs
and obtained more uniform thickness. Kreziak et al.
[8] utilized SIMULOR, a filling and solidification
simulation software, to simulate a quarter of an
automobile wheel cast. The results were validated
Top mould
Side mould
Support mold
Button mould
Fig. 1 CAD models of casting moulds for an aluminium
disc wheel
Air cooling
Fig. 2 The finite element model of an aluminium wheel and its moulds
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by experimental data that temperatures were mea-
sured from different positions. In the meantime,
they used a simple sample to study the effects of
cycle time, preheat temperature, and die coatings.
The current paper presents a case study of using
computer simulation for the casting process of alu-
minium wheels of a local manufacturer in order to
establish a process to find out the optimal cooling
conditions to avoid shrinkage cavity. The ‘liquid
entrap’ phenomenon at the joints of rim and spokes
of the wheel during the casting process causes
shrinkage cavity of the final aluminium wheel. In
this research, a ‘shrinkage index’ (SI) is defined to
describe the amount of entrapment of liquid. It
provides a quantified index of casting quality of
aluminium wheels. The casting simulation is done
iteratively until the mould temperature converges
to a stable temperature.
This paper starts by describing the simulation
model, the simulation process, and defining SI.
Correlation of the SI with the aluminium wheel
leakage test results of the local manufacturer is
then investigated using the iterative simulation.
The influences of cooling process parameters on SI
are then discussed, including initial mould tempera-
ture and geometry of the wheel.
2 SIMULATION OF CASTING PROCESS OF
ALUMINIUM WHEELS USING ProCAST
Many major foundries use commercial software
such as ProCAST and MagmaSOFT, to simulate
filling and solidification of castings. In this paper,
ProCAST is used to simulate the casting process of
aluminium wheels. ProCAST uses the finite element
method and can be employed to analyse a wide
variety of fully coupled thermal, fluid, stress, and
microstructure prediction problems in the casting
process [9].
Figure 2 shows the finite element model of a
15 in aluminium wheel and its moulds. The inter-
faces of each part are coincident in the model.
Water cooling
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Table 1 The material properties of the alloy

Fraction solid Density Thermal conductivity

Temperature (C) % Temperature (C) kg/m3 Temperature (K) W/(mK)

557.98 100 25.00 2702.00 406.67 146.50
558.00 92.10 656.00 2540.00 420.16 153.26
562.00 90.16 664.00 2380.00 432.26 154.94
564.00 88.20 700.00 2369.00 477.02 166.76
566.00 82.81 589.52 167.43
568.00 71.54 666.13 166.08
570.00 53.90
570.50 45.10
574.00 44.10
578.00 41.65
582.00 38.70
586.00 34.40
590.00 28.42
594.00 22.54
598.00 15.20
602.00 7.06
605.00 0.00

Four-noded tetrahedral elements are used. The
material used is AlSi7Mg (ASTM A356, JIS AC4C)
casting aluminium alloy, which can be found in
ProCAST’s material database. The heat capacity of
the alloy is 963 J/(kg K), and the latent heat is
3.98 · 105 J/kg. Table 1 lists other thermal
characteristics of the alloy, which are functions of
temperature.
The boundary conditions of the simulation are
based on the wheel manufacturer’s real parameters.
In casting, one or more of the following remedies
are often used to prevent unfilled cavity: preheating
the die, insulating some/all of the cavity surface
with die coating, and increasing the filling velocity.
In the current simulation, the temperature of the
melted alloy is 720
C. The cavity volume of the
model is 7.474e3 m3, and the fill duration is 16 s.
The filled velocity is 0.673 m/s through the sectional
area of 0.693 m3. The die is preheated to 360
C,
while the ambient temperature is 30
C. For a coated
die with a metal–mould heat transfer coefficient of
300 W/m2 C, the whole cavity can be filled in the
simulation.
Figure 2 also shows the locations of air cooling
(by blowing cold air to the side mould) and water
cooling (by spraying water to the bottom mould).
In the simulation, cooling parameters are also
based on the wheel manufacturer’s real parameters.
The heat transfer coefficient of air cooling is
700 W/m2 C and its affected area is 4800 mm2. The
heat transfer coefficient of water cooling is
2200 W/m2 C and its affected area is 88 822 mm2.
The filling of melted metal completes after 16 s.
Air cooling starts at 66 s and continues until the
end of casting (240 s). Water cooling starts at 126 s
and lasts for 40 s. Finally, the casting wheel is
picked out of the cavity at the end of casting. The
mould is cooled down for 30 s, and the next casting
cycle starts.
Figure 3 shows the solidification process of a
typical aluminum wheel (referred to as ‘Type A’ in
this paper) from ProCAST. After approximately
150 s into the casting process, the liquid starts to
be entrapped at the intersection between the spokes
and rim. At the positions indicated by the circles,
the surrounding regions become solidified. Both
the central riser and the rim riser cannot provide
liquid metal. The position of entrapped liquid is
coincident with a volume where the aluminium
wheel actually fails, as shown in Fig. 4.
The simulation shown in Fig. 3 assumes constant
initial mould temperature everywhere. However,
this is not true in reality. Figure 5 shows the
temperature distribution of the casting process
of an aluminium wheel simulated by ProCAST.
The temperature scale range is 250–466
C. During
the casting process, the temperature distribution
changes after filling, air cooling, water cooling, and
casting out of cavity. In a continuous casting pro-
cess, this final temperature distribution of the
mould becomes the initial temperature distribution
of the mould for the next casting.
As mentioned earlier, Spittle et al. [6] used
MAVIS to predict the temperature distributions
in a permanent mould. The mould for the produc-
tion of AlSi7Mg alloy castings had been used
to assess the influence of mould design modifi-
cations and water cooling on the steady state
temperature distribution in the mould and the
freezing characteristics of the casting. Results
matched very well between experiment and simula-
tion, where a steady state was assumed to be
achieved in any batch run without water cooling
after 20 castings.

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206 Yeh-Liang Hsu and Chia-Chieh Yu

131 s 152 s 173 s

Fig. 3 The solidification process of a typical aluminium wheel from ProCAST

Fig. 4 The position where the aluminium wheel actually

fails

In the current research, an attempt is made to

evaluate the cooling parameters only after a steady
state mould temperature is reached. ProCAST simu-
lation is performed continuously for ten cycles. In
the first simulation, the mould temperature is assu-
med to be constant everywhere at 360
C. The final
temperature distribution of mould of the simulation
is then used as the initial temperature distribution of
mould in the next simulation. Figure 6 shows the
results of ten simulations and shows the maximum Fig. 5 Temperature distributions of mould during the
temperature (D), the minimum temperature (r), casting process

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 Computer simulation of casting process of aluminium wheels
Fig. 6 The maximum, minimum, and mean temperature of the casting mould in each simulation
Fig. 7 Liquid entrapment at the joint of rim and spokes
and the mean temperature (o) of the casting mould
in each simulation. The temperature distribution
of the casting mould reaches a steady state after
ten simulations – the relative changes in maximum
temperature, minimum temperature, and mean
temperature are all less than one per cent. Therefore,
in this research the casting process simulation
results are observed after ten cyclic simulations.
3 DEFINITION OF A SHRINKAGE INDEX
Figure 7 shows the solidification of the vertical
section of wheel Type A. The solidification scale of
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207
Fig. 7 is from 0.3 to 0.9 (0 for pure liquid and 1 for
solid). Critical fraction solid, the point at which the
alloy is solid enough that liquid feed metal can no
longer flow, is assumed to be 0.7. As shown in the
left of Fig. 7, the solidification scale reaches 0.7 in
the rim of the wheel indicated by the dashed circle
after approximately 131 s. The riser on the top of
the rim (rim riser) cannot provide melted alloy to
the joint of rim and spokes. As the cooling process
continues, the solidification scale reaches 0.7 in the
spoke of the wheel after about 173 s. This portion
is thicker and is located further from the risers,
so longer solidification time is required. Now the
central riser cannot provide melted alloy to the joint
of rim and spokes. Therefore, liquid entrapment
occurs at the joint of rim and spokes.
Kreziak et al. [8] showed that there is no risk of
shrinkage under where the solidification presents
an orientated temperature gradient from the top to
the running system, and the critical solid fraction
isochronal chart does not show liquid entrapped
areas. When a part of the casting is locally being
solidified without feeding from the system, this is a
high-risk area.
Therefore, the volume of the liquid-entrapped
portion in the wheel can be used to indicate the level
of shrinkage in the wheel. An SI is employed in order
to define quantitatively the level of shrinkage from
the simulation results by ProCast. Figure 8 shows
the portion of the wheel where shrinkage cavity
usually happens. ProCAST can output the solid
fraction at each node at a certain instant. It is diffi-
cult to output the volume of a portion of the
casting in ProCAST, and the sizes of the finite
elements are almost equal. Therefore, the number
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208 Yeh-Liang Hsu and Chia-Chieh Yu

Fig. 8 The portion of the wheel where shrinkage cavity usually happens

Fig. 9 SI with ten cyclic simulations

of nodes with solid fractions less than 0.7 at the Table 2 Comparison of leakage test data and SI
instant when both risers become invalid are
Type A B C-3 C-2 C-1
employed as the SI.
As discussed in the previous section, in this Total number of wheels tested 917 1135 1139 20 20
Number of wheels with leakage 86 203 316 8 12
research, the wheel casting process was simulated Leakage ratio % 9.4 17.9 27.7 40 60
continuously for ten cycles in order to reach a steady SI 20 73 111 122 132
state mould temperature. Figure 9 shows the SI of
these ten cycles for wheel Type A. SI is high for
the first several simulations, but soon converges to simulation. Types C-1, C-2, and C-3 are almost
approximately 20 at the eighth to tenth simulation. identical wheels with slightly different geometries,
This also shows that a reasonable simulation which will be discussed in later sections. The leak-
result can be obtained after a steady state mould age ratios of Type C-1 and C-2 were very high and
temperature is reached. were not approved for mass production. Therefore,
In aluminium wheel manufacturing, every casting there were only 20 test samples of Types C-1 and
wheel must pass a ‘leakage test’ to guarantee that C-2 available for testing. Types A, B, and C-3 are
the air will not leak through shrinkage cavities. The mass-produced wheels.
‘leakage ratio’ is the ratio of the number of wheels Figure 10 shows the relation between leakage
with leakage and the total number of wheels tested. ratio and SI. When SI is high, the leakage ratio will
Table 2 shows the test data for three types of wheels be high. If more data are accumulated, SI can be a
(Types A, B, and C) from the local aluminium wheel good index for predicting the leakage ratio in the
manufacturer and their corresponding SI from our leakage test.

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 Computer simulation of casting process of aluminium wheels 209

Fig. 10 SI versus leakage ratio

Table 3 Effect of starting time of air cooling Table 5 Effect of initial mould temperature

Starting time 16–240 s 26–240 s 66–240 s 106–240 s 146–240 s Initial mould 300
C 330
C 360
C 390
C 420
C 450
C
SI 21 20 20 26 35 temperature
Liquid 163 s 164 s 164 s 164 s 164 s SI 20 21 20 30 39 41
entrapped Liquid 155 s 159 s 168 s 168 s 172 s 176 s
entrapped

Table 4 Effect of duration of water cooling

Duration 20 s 30 s 40 s 50 s
SI X 20 20 26
Liquid entrapped X 169 s 168 s 160 s
4 EFFECT OF COOLING PARAMETERS
Using the cyclic simulation process and the SI
described in the previous sections, this section dis-
cusses the influences of the timing of air cooling
and water cooling on SI. Table 3 shows the SI and
the time when liquid is entrapped with variation in
starting time of air cooling from 16 s to 146 s. The
time when liquid is entrapped is not influenced by
air cooling because air cooling is applied on the
side mould. Only the rim riser is affected. The central
riser is not affected. As expected, SI increases if air
cooling is applied late and thus solidification at the
joint of rim and spokes is slower. However, if air
cooling is applied earlier than at 66 s (the starting
time of the current casting process), no decrease in
SI is observed. If air cooling is applied at 16 s (imme-
diately after filling is completed), SI increases slightly
because the rim riser cools down too fast and soon
becomes inactive.
Table 4 shows the SI and the time when liquid
60 s 70 s
37 45
is entrapped with variation in duration of water
153 s 151 s cooling from 20 to 70 s (water cooling still starts at
66 s). Water cooling is applied to the bottom
and has a significant effect on the central riser.
Liquid entrapment occurred earlier when the dura-
tion of water cooling is long, and SI increases. Water
cooling for less than 40 s (the water cooling time of
the current casting process) will not further decrease
SI. However, when water cooling is less than 20 s,
the casting will not solidify at the end of the casting
(240 s) because there is not enough cooling.
The initial mould temperature is also considered
in the casting process. Table 5 shows the SI and the
time when liquid is entrapped with variation in the
initial temperature of the mould in the range of
300 to 450
C. When the initial temperature of the
mould is high, the solidification is slow and SI is
high, although the time when liquid is entrapped
is long. Decreasing the initial mould temperature
to less than 360
C (the mould temperature of the
current casting process) will not further reduce SI
because liquid is entrapped early. From the analysis
of results given in Tables 3 to 5, it follows that the
timing for air cooling and water cooling, as well as
the initial mould temperature in the current casting

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210 Yeh-Liang Hsu and Chia-Chieh Yu

Thickening

Fig. 11 The geometry and cross-section of wheel Type A Fig. 12 Thickened portion of the rim cavity
and Type C
Table 8 Different thickening of rim
Table 6 Cooling conditions of simulation Wheel type C-1 C-2 C-3

Casting parameters Thickening of rim 0 þ0.75 mm þ1.5 mm

SI 132 122 111
Alloy filling time 24 s Liquid entrapped 116 s 127 s 130 s
Air cooling time 24–210 s
Water cooling time 74–134 s
Initial mould temp. 360
C
Wheel solidification time 210 s
Type C, which indicates that the geometry of the
wheel makes a great difference in the casting
process. For wheel Type A, the rim riser becomes
Table 7 Simulation results inactive much earlier than the central riser. For
wheel Type C, both risers become inactive at about
Type A Type C
the same time because the cross-sectional areas of
Rim riser inactive 124 s 116 s the spokes are small.
Central riser inactive 161 s 116 s
SI 31 132
In addition to adjusting cooling parameters,
engineers also often modify the geometry of the
casting cavity to improve the quality of the casting.
For example, in wheel Type C, engineers decided
process of the local manufacturer, obtained from the to thicken the portion of the rim cavity (Fig. 12), so
engineers’ empirical adjustment, seems already to that a melted alloy would not solidify too fast in
be close to the optimum. this portion and the rim riser can provide enough
melted alloy into the joint of the rim and spokes.
Table 8 shows the SI and the time when liquid is
5 EFFECT OF WHEEL GEOMETRY entrapped with variation in thickness of the rim
of wheel Type C. When the thickness of the rim
Figure 11 shows the different geometries of wheel increases, liquid is entrapped late, and SI decreases.
Type A and Type C. Wheel Type A has five Type C-3 has the best SI; however, it is also the
spokes and the cross-sectional area of a spoke is heaviest among the three. As shown in Table 2, the
1060.7 mm2. Wheel Type C has ten spokes and the leakage ratio in the leakage test of Type C-1 is
cross-sectional area of a spoke is 405.3 mm2. Table 60 per cent, and that of Type C-2 is 40 per cent, while
6 shows the current cooling parameters for wheel the leakage ratio of Type C-3 drops to 27.7 per cent.
Type C. Comparing with wheel Type A, the filling
of wheel Type C takes longer because the cross-
sectional area of the spoke is smaller. Air cooling 6 CONCLUSION
is applied right after filling is completed and the
duration of water cooling is extended. Numerical simulation is a powerful tool for many
For comparison purposes, both wheel Type A and industrial applications. While efforts are made to
wheel Type C were simulated using the cooling con- produce accurate simulation results, it is often
ditions given in Table 6. As shown in Table 7, the SI difficult to model accurately the boundary and load-
for wheel Type A is much better than that of wheel ing conditions in many real industrial applications,

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 Computer simulation of casting process of aluminium wheels
such as the casting of aluminium wheels. In many
applications, it is also difficult to validate accurately
the simulation results with physical measurement
data. However, numerical simulation still provides
the correct ‘trend’, if not 100 per cent numerically
accurate, of the performance and quality of the final
product. On the other hand, to implement numerical
simulation as part of the everyday manufacturing
process, a standardized simulation process needs to
be established, and simple indices, which correctly
describe the trend of the performance and quality
of the final product, should be obtained from the
simulation results.
In this paper, casting simulation software Pro-
CAST is used to simulate the casting process of
aluminium wheels of a local manufacturer. A cyclic
simulation process is established to simulate
properly the temperature distribution of the mould
in real casting process. SI is defined to describe
quantitatively the level of casting shrinkage from
casting simulation. Matching with the leakage test
results of the five different wheels, SI shows good
correlation with the aluminium wheel leakage test
results. The effects of cooling parameters and geo-
metry of the mould cavity on SI are also discussed.
Engineers’ empirical data concerning modification
of cooling parameters can be verified. If enough
leakage test data for a given aluminium wheel
manufacturer are accumulated, the relation between
SI and leakage ratio of final casting wheels can be
established. Leakage ratio of a new wheel can be
predicted using SI.
For future research, the current authors are also
investigating optimization of casting parameters
to obtain the best casting quality. The objective can
be to minimize SI (therefore the leakage ratio of final
casting wheels). Casting simulation described in the
present paper can be used as the function
generator of SI.
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