AN INVESTIGATION OF RECTANGULAR SAND CORE BLOWING SYSTEMS USING COMPUTATIONAL PARTICLE FLUID DYNAMICS
Open Access
- Author:
- Werner, Benjamin D.
- Area of Honors:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Dr. John Michael Cimbala, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. John Michael Cimbala, Thesis Supervisor
Professor Matthew M Mench, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- computational particle fluid dynamics
metalcasting
sand cores - Abstract:
- This thesis is an investigation into the effect of introducing more air flow through additional pressure inlets to the blow chamber of a core blowing machine using computational particle fluid dynamics software (CPFD). Twelve base simulations were run to test the effects of introducing more air flow and pressure to the sand at specified locations as it is being blown. The only aspects of the core blowing system that were varied over the tests were the blow locations and pressures; everything else remained constant to be able to compare the results consistently. Images of the sand volume particle fraction filling, the pressure, and the density were used to evaluate the performance of the different inlet patterns and pressure magnitudes. The behavior of the sand around the side inlets as well as the filling of the cores was of main interest. From these 12 simulations, the results were examined and a few more tests were run to try to increase the efficiency even more by combining blow locations and pressures. A major finding of these investigations was that there was little change in the sand core fillings despite expectations. This is due to the randomness factor of the software having such an influence on the sand flow, regardless of the variables. Even when identical tests were run the results were inconsistent and showed different fill levels in the cores. To get a better understanding of how the blow locations and pressures affect the core filling, more simulations would need to be run per test to gather a large data set to run statistical analysis on the core fillings.