There is a constant demand for better preforming and simultaneously lighter components within the automotive industry, this has resulted in an increased interest in aluminium casting. The continuous improvement of components leads to higher demands on the material performance and incorporating material science in the product development process is necessary for more reliable products. 

A master thesis in Product Development and Materials Engineering has been conducted as a part of the research project ODISSEE2, aiming towards obtaining material knowledge of how porosity affects fatigue performance. The thesis further investigates how this material knowledge can be integrated into numerical simulations early in the design phase of the product development process. The purpose of the work is to establish a material model for fatigue performance of aluminium test specimens. This material model is then integrated in the product development processes where MAGMASOFT is used to predict where the occurrence of hot spots indicates possible porosity. This result is connected to FEM calculations in ABAQUS and the previously mentioned material model to visualize the local fatigue life of the component.

Through adjustments in the casting process, it is possible to obtain a variation in the quality of the material based on the amount of defects. This possibility has been utilized in the process of making high pressure die cast test specimen of EN AC-46000 aluminium. Each test specimens are radiographed where the images are later used to categorize the quality of the material in regard to the level of porosity. The test specimens are then used in static and dynamic testing to obtain material data which correlate the mechanical properties to four porosity categories. The categorization is based on the amount of pores visible on x-ray images.

The project resulted in material data which show a decrease in material performance when pores and oxides are present in the alloy. The decrease in performance where observed during both static and dynamic testing of the alloy with lowering of ultimate tensile strength (UTS), elongation, and fatigue performance as a result of defects. Yield strength (YS) and young’s modulus (E) is shown to be unaffected by the defects. This result could then be integrated in a fatigue simulation which is based on result obtained during from a casting and FEM simulation of an engine bracket. A computer code was developed to connect computer applications used for simulation, integrate the material data into the simulation process and visualise the resulting fatigue simulation