Hot Tearing analysis and process optimisation of the fire face of Al-Cu alloy cylinder head based on MAGMA numerical simulation

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a casting improvement process to enable the casting of Al-Cu alloy cylinder heads to achieve the required quality. The hot tearing defects generated in the fire face of the cylinder head during casting were simulated using MAGMA software. The simulation results show that the large wall thickness transition difference in the fire face of the cylinder head is the reason for the large temperature and stress gradient during solidification. Therefore, the first solution was optimised by forming the fire face as a whole into a flat plate, but the fire face centre area stress is still too high. The second optimisation option optimises the cold iron structure of the fire face, the probability of cracking in the fire face is reduced to 17%. These results have important reference significance for the optimisation of the Al-Cu alloy cylinder head hot tearing problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Al-Cu alloy
• cylinder head
• MAGMA simulation
• process optimisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability

All data generated or used during the study appear in the submitted article.