Abstract: To describe the flow behaviors of semi-solid state alloy A356, two non-Newtonian constitutive equations are modeled in this paper. The CFD software PROCAST is used to simulate the process of die filling. The filling temperature is 585°C (solid fraction is 0.4). Based on the results of the simulation, it is found that the material in semi-solid state exhibits an apparently higher viscosity and thus, flows much more smoothly than the Newtonian fluid. In addition, the semi-solid metal alloy has a special die filling behavior compared with liquid filling which is of great importance in improving the quality of the final components.

Keywords: FEM simulation; ProCAST software; A356 alloy.