Prevention of casting defects in an aluminum alloy component

This work of thesis has been developed in collaboration with the companies STCast S.r.l. e F.O.M.T. S.p.a. and it focuses on analyzing the gravity mold casting process for an aluminum casting alloy component, which is destinated for use in internal combustion industrial vehicles as an engine oil pan. The part has a moderately complicated geometry that ends up causing a particularly critical defect during its manufacturing process, which this thesis work focuses to solve. The work prevalently consisted in experimental research, analizying the effects of different experimental approaches to the production run of this particular product in order to solve its manufacturing problems, analizying both at the macroscopic and microscopic level some samples from the different experimental production runs and comparing their microstructures in order to validate the different results. The modification of the mold in order to implement a compressed air cooling system proved to be very effective in solving the occurrance of hot spots in locations where it was not possible to set a proper directional solidification due to the part's geometry. The thesis is divided in two parts, with the first part constituting the ensemble of notions required to build a theoretical background in order to better understand the choices behind the experimental research performed on the second part of the thesis.