Thermo-mechanical modelling of aluminium cast parts during solution treatment

摘要

The increasing interest of the automotive industry in reducing the weight of cars has resulted in increasing replacement of steel with aluminium parts as well as in an optimization of the design of the components, through structural analysis by FE-codes. The design and manufacturing of these components are important for the lifetime and reliability of the final parts. It is common practice to do load analyses in order to evaluate component lifetime and to do design optimization. However, in order to improve these structural analyses it is important to include the full load history of the material including the influence of the casting process and the subsequent solution treatment phase, quenching and artificial ageing. These manufacturing stages can have a high influence on the deformation and development of residual stresses which are important as initial conditions for subsequent load analysis during service.