Predicting die life from die temperature for high pressure dies casting aluminium alloy

The objective of this research was to determine the surface temperature of a high pressure die casting die during casting conditions. This was achieved by instrumentation of an insert which was placed in the shotplate region of the die. This research overcame the challenge of directly measuring the die surface temperature during a HPDC production casting cycle and shows that this is an effective method to determine the die surface temperature during the casting cycle. The instrumentation results gave a peak and minimum temperature of 500 degrees C and 240 degrees C respectively during steady state running conditions with a molten aluminium casting temperature of 660 degrees C. Stress analysis from the steady state measured temperature of the die surface was calculated through a simple FEA model and the resulting stress fluctuation was applied to a fatigue equation for the die material, the predicted number of cycles for cracking to start was found to correlate well with observed die damage. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.