This thesis investigates the development of a FEM model for aluminum casting virtual manufacturing. These kinds of simulations are employed in the industries to develop an optimal mold geometry to reduce manufacturing-induced defects in the final piece. manufacturing process simulation allows to speed up time to market and reduce cost related to testing requiring suitable facilities and a test for each design change. FEM simulation allows the user to go through the heuristic phase much quicker with a significant cost saving. Several commercial software performing casting simulations such as InspireCast are available, but they don’t disclose the computational methodology to obtain results and few parameters are tunable.