Simulating the Effect of Running System Design on the Melt Flow and Feeding of a Hollow Cylinder of A356 Al Alloy

Simulation softwares are not able to design and can only show various aspects of the suggested design by the running system designer. In this paper, the design of running system with the variation of pouring time (in the range of 5 -20 seconds) for a hollow cylinder component weighing approximately 56 kg was carried out based on the choke calculation method. The number of gates used in the design were 2, 4 and 6 and different types and locations of the ingates were considered. The optimal design and pouring time achieved in this work improves the filling and feeding conditions, allowing the control of the linear velocity based on critical gate velocity criteria and a nonturbulent filling pattern of the mold cavity. The maximum average velocity in the gate was decreased from 2 m. s -1 to 0,17 m. s -1 followed by the control of the cooling rate, improved filling conditions, lowering the shrinkage and the likelihood of its formation has decreased by 41%.