Simulation and Experimental Study of the Preheating Mould Temperature Distribution in Semi-Solid Diecasting

The mould temperature distribution has a great influence on the semi-solid diecasting. In the present study the temperature distribution of a plane-shaped mould was investigated by using the method of numerical simulation and experiment. The results showed that the preheating mould temperature field was affected by three important simulation parameters, the heat transfer coefficient hoil between the heat transfer oil and the mould, the heat transfer coefficient hair between the mould and the air, and the heat transfer coefficient hcontact between the mould core and the mould frame. The simulation results showed that (1) with the increase of hoil, the overall mould temperature imcreased; (2) with the increase of hair, the overall mould temperature decreased, while the surface temperature gradient of mould frame grad T-f and the temperature difference between the mould core and the mould frame ∆T increased; (3) With the increase of hcontact, ∆T decreased and the temperature of mould frame increased. When the heat oil temperature Toil=290°C, the heat transfer coefficients were optimized as hoil=500Wm-2K-1, hair=7Wm-2K-1, and hcontact=1000Wm-2K-1 according to the experimental results. The average temperature difference between the simulation result and the experimental result was 3.45°C, and the average relative error was 1.73%.