Overview of the correlations between process parameters, microstructure and mechanical properties of reference castings and industrial demonstrators

Among the Aluminum casting processes, High Pressure Die Casting (HPDC) is an efficient, versatile and economic way for producing large number of components. Nevertheless, because of the elevated amount of rejected castings, it is important to know which are the main causes of defect formation and their effects on microstructure and mechanical properties. This paper presents, within the European MUSIC project, an overview of the preliminary correlations obtained studying both castings with defect generator geometry, referred to as Horse-shoe Reference Castings, and industrial demonstrators, referred to as Gear Box Housing. The deduced correlations between static mechanical properties and casting defects highlighted interesting trends in both cases.