CD Laboratory for Manufacturing Process based Component Design

This CD Laboratory researches key parameters of material fatigue in aluminium and steel castings. The aim is to simplify and better control the design process for highly complex cast parts based on the underlying fatigue-relevant properties.

Assessing the material fatigue of cyclically loaded metal parts, such as those used in the automotive and railway industries, is still a major challenge in the design process. The technological manufacturing process of casting contains structural features such as pores and inclusions, which can significantly influence the fatigue strength of cast aluminium and steel components. Nevertheless, these imperfections are an unavoidable, process-related feature that is inherent in every cast part. The effects of such imperfections on the fatigue strength of a casting depend largely on their size and shape, their distance to other imperfections and to the surface.

The aim of this CD Laboratory is to characterise these microstructural features locally, taking into account both individual imperfections and networks of imperfections. A statistical quality index can be derived from this, which is used on the one hand to assess the local load-bearing capacity of a particular component, but also enables the design and production process to be significantly improved.

The work is dedicated to both aluminium and steel castings, which have fundamentally different characteristics at different length scales. In a first step, imperfections in castings produced according to current manufacturing processes are to be evaluated and classified. In addition, the consequences of characteristic imperfections for the local fatigue strength are to be evaluated in operationally stable tests. Based on the knowledge gained, quality factors will be defined as technological structural characteristics of the manufacturing process with regard to the influence of size and the static distribution of extreme imperfections.

The research of this CD Laboratory will thus make it possible to better assess the fatigue strength of cast parts made of aluminium or steel that are subjected to cyclic loads and to optimise the component design and the manufacturing process accordingly.