Casting Design

Connecting Worlds: Simulation for Casting Part Designers

Casting designers agree that the use of casting process simulation in the early casting development phase offers the greatest benefits. This is because the direct inspection of new casting designs through simulation ensures that all components leaving the development department are suitable for casting and can be manufactured in an economical process.

MAGMA has designed its casting process simulation solutions in a conceptual and technical way, so that they improve the collaboration of casting designers with the downstream production chain.

MAGMA ensures that geometries can be easily imported via interfaces and interactive geometry editing. The screenshot shows an exploded view of the geometry of a casting to be simulated, from which the dies and side cores for production can be derived.

CAD interfaces for fast feedback loops between development and production

For the analysis of newly developed castings, MAGMA  5 offers CAD interfaces to import the neutral data formats STL, STEP and ACIS.sat as well as direct interfaces for CATIA V5 and PRO/E.

This allows casting geometries to be easily and quickly imported, and checked by MAGMA  5. Changes to the casting, which are implemented in a CAD program based on simulation results, can in turn be checked rapidly by MAGMA  5 for effectiveness. This allows rapid and short feedback loops between casting development and production.

FE analysis of simulated castings

All MAGMA  5 results are available for other CAE programs and can be transferred to FE meshes for load simulations. 

Transfer of calculated local fatigue strength from MAGMA  5 to an FE mesh

Supported simulation programs include:

  • ABAQUS
  • ANSYS
  • PERMAS
  • ADINA
  • LS-DYNA
  • RADIOSS
  • PAMCRASH
  • FEMFAT
  • LMS Falancs
  • I-DEAS
  • PATRAN
  • HYPERMESH
  • HYPERVIEW

Transfer of calculated local fatigue strength from MAGMA  5 to an FE mesh

Experience Design: Simulation in 3D

In order to further optimize the communication between casting development and production, simulation results and geometries can be presented and “experienced” in three dimensions using virtual reality technologies.

MAGMA  5 uses “Active Stereo Shutter” and anaglyph technology allowing for castings and casting processes to be viewed in “Real 3D”.

Left: Calculated porosity; Right: Defect probability from three CT scans