from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
During the production of aluminium and steel cast parts for safety-critical applications, it is standard practice to reduce unwanted impurities by filtration of the liquid metal prior to casting using ceramic foam filters. The most critical stage of the filtration process is the infiltration of the ceramic foam during start-up, especially when the filter cannot be preheated, as heat loss to the filter may lead to freezing and casting failure. The present study aims to reduce this risk through a better understanding of its sensitivity with respect to the process parameters and geometric properties of the filter. Therefore, the infiltration process was numerically simulated using a 2D pore-scale model, enabling extensive parameter variations to investigate the influence of parameters such as porosity, pore density and melt superheat temperature. The results are qualitatively consistent with experimental observations of the process.
Keywords: ceramic foam filter, infiltration, priming, CFD, pore-scale simulation, freezing, porous media© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.