Guidelines for Mechanical Design of Al-alloy cast components

This Chapter is aimed at elaborating an operative support to mechanical designers, involved in the field of Al alloy components. The availability of two new CEN Technical Reports on defects & imperfections in castings (resulting from WP2) and mechanical potential of Al-Si foundry alloys (resulting from WP3) makes necessary the development of a new approach in the design stage. Such a new approach has to take into account  the “mechanical potential” of Al foundry alloys (draft CEN Technical Report: Fpr TR 16748 (00132378), “Aluminium and Aluminium alloys - Mechanical Potential of Al-Si alloys for High Pressure, Low Pressure and Gravity Die Casting”,  the critical role played in castings by the different types of defects, classified in the new CEN Technical Report Fpr TR 16749 (001323789), “Aluminium and aluminium alloys - Classification of Defects and Imperfections in High Pressure, Low Pressure and Gravity Die Cast Products”,  the need of considering, for cast products, the interaction existing among microstructure, defects and mechanical behaviour, leading to a “distribution of mechanical properties”. These aspects will be described in the guidelines developed in this Chapter.