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 dieduring casting conditions. This was achieved by instrumentation of an insert which was placed in theshotplate region of the die. This research overcame the challenge of directly measuring the die surfacetemperature during a HPDC production casting cycle and shows that this is an effective method todetermine the die surface temperature during the casting cycle. The instrumentation results gave a peakand minimum temperature of 500 C and 240 C respectively during steady state running conditionswith a molten aluminium casting temperature of 660 C. Stress analysis from the steady state measuredtemperature of the die surface was calculated through a simple FEA model and the resulting stressuctuation was applied to a fatigue equation for the die material, the predicted number of cycles forcracking to start was found to correlate well with observed die damage.
Highlights
► This research overcame the challenge of directly measuring die surface temperature. ► This is an effective method to determine the die surface temperature. ► The instrumentation results gave a peak and min temperature of 500 °C and 240 °C. ► The predicted cycles for cracking to start correlate with observed die damage.