Casting and Solidification Processing

Casting is one of the most important shaping processes, largely used and consolidated throughout the world to produce near-net-shaping parts. The advantages, compared to other manufacturing processes, are evident: the relative low production cost and time, the high ranges of thicknesses and masses allowed, the possibility to shape alloys that are only castable (say, cast iron or certain light alloys), the high adaptability to the requirements of mass production, and, last but not least, the excellent bearing quality of the casted parts. However, all these advantages could be lost if the process parameters are not correctly calibrated to obtain near defect-free casting components. In most foundries, such parameters calibration is entrusted to experience rather than real knowledge of the rules governing the solidification phenomena. A comprehensive understanding of those rules is still unknown to the academic world and represents a formidable challenge in view of digitalization of the foundry industry.

This Special Issue collects 12 recent excellent research works [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12] about casting and solidification processing to give the reader a good update of the actual knowledge about casting phenomena. New experimental, numerical, and analytical methodologies were proposed to investigate the intriguing relationship among alloy composition, casting geometry, and process parameters.

What will the foundry industry of the future look like? It is my opinion that smart data deriving from these rand future research works can help the modern foundry industry to take advantage of a real-time adjustment of process parameters through digitalization.

My hope is that the reader will find in this Special Issue new ideas for a modern foundry practice.