While innovative designs demand designers to evaluate their designs early, assessing whether a concept design of a cast product can be manufactured is a challenging task and traditionally requires a simulation expert. Hence, in order to create next-generation products, manufacturing feasibility has to be part of the design process. Additionally, as anywhere in product development, product designers of cast products feel the growing pressure to deliver better cast products that cost and weigh less.

They certainly pose a big challenge to designers of cast products. Shrinkage, porosity, air entrapment, cold shuts and mould degradation are defects that can typically occur in the casting process. While downstream corrections can be quite expensive, casting simulation with modern software tools enables designers to visualise and avoid these defects, thus ensuring manufacturing feasibility. Typical casting defects such as shrinkage, porosity or air entrapment are a big challenge to designers of cast products. This can be achieved with innovative software tools such as Altair Inspire, which enables engineers to quickly produce efficient designs that are reliable in function and manufacturability.

Due to increasing requirements, such as shorter time or new regulatory requirements, companies must adapt their development processes to produce high-performance products that are weight-, material- and cost-efficient.

Altair inspire cast