Editor’s Pick: CAE Software Simulates Industrial Casting Processes

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

CD-adapco has always been at the front end of CAE technology development. It has done it again by teaming up with a research center in Germany called Access to develop STAR-Cast, a multidisciplinary simulation tool for industrial casting processes.

Now, some of you may not be familiar with Access. I was not. Access is a non-profit, independent research center associated with the Technical University of Aachen in Germany. Access specializes in materials and processes with a special focus on metallic materials and casting processes. They have more than 50 engineers and scientists at work on such stuff.

So, what CD-adapco and these guys at Access did was collaborate on a simulation tool that could address a broad range of industrial casting processes such as gravity sand casting, low pressure and counter pressure casting, and continuous casting. I’m told that the software is easy to use, as automatic as possible, and, because it uses the same CFD (computational fluid dynamics) technology found in CD-adapco’s STAR-CCM+ and STAR-CD,  powerful.

STAR-Cast offers simulation features that let you account for special initial and boundary conditions like low gas pressure, permeable molds, and moving boundaries. It has melt flow calculations, and it helps you accurately predict heat flow, dimensional stability, residual stresses, and mechanical properties of castings. In other words, this is not the sort of tool casting designers, tool makers, and foundry people are used to having.

Which is really something of a metaphor for CD-adapco. For more than 30 years, they’ve been a leader in CFD software development and CAE engineering services in CFD and FEA. So, it seems appropriate that they should come up with an industrial strength yet easy to use simulation solution for industrial casting processes.

You can learn more about STAR-Cast from today’s Pick of the Week write-up. Make sure to hit the link to the STAR-Cast applications. They will give you a great idea why STAR-Cast is something new in the world of industrial casting. Well worth checking out.

Thanks, pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s Pick of the Week write-up.