Editor's Pick: Casting Simulation System Upgraded

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

Chrysler's “Born of Fire” Super Bowl ad with its tagline “Imported from Detroit” cast that beleaguered, gritty, and determined city in a new, positive light for many of us. But did you know that, with a similar grit and determination, U.S. manufacturing has been climbing out of the deep hole of recession? Faster than many parts of the economy, according to reports in the business press.

There are many reasons for manufacturing growth, but one thing is clear: people like you are doing things in new ways that bring efficiency to your process and more robust, more competitive products to the world market. Today's Pick of the Week is a good example of new ways to get your work done.

CD-adapco and its development partner Access have jointly announced the release of version 1.08 of their industrial casting simulation system STAR-Cast. Among the many attributes that STAR-Cast seems to have are ease of use and power. That's a combination that tools for multidisciplinary analysis of industrial castings and processes are not generally described as offering.

STAR-Cast leverages the technology deployed in CD-adapco’s STAR-CCM+ and STAR-CD high-end CFD solutions. And CD-adapco has been on a mission for a quarter century or so to make industrial-strength CFD accessible to more engineers through automation of complex processes and engineer-machine interface sanity.

For its part, Access brings to STAR-Cast deep expertise in metallurgy and casting processes, including simulating the internal microstructures of materials. This multi-level, base to sublime combination of expertise gives designers, toolmakers, and foundry personnel a high-end, yet easy-to-use toolset for the analysis of high- and low-pressure die casting, gravity sand casting, investment casting, and so on. That's good stuff.

Version 1.08 of STAR-Cast is reported to have been enhanced with abilities to enable additional simulations of casting processes such as shell mold generation. New physics models and tools for post-processing have also been incorporated. You can read more about STAR-Cast 1.08 from today's Pick of the Week write-up. But your best bet is to take about a half a minute (literally) and watch the trio of videos linked off the end. Suffice to say, it's exciting stuff.

Fourteen months ago I wrote about STAR-Cast saying that it is “something new in the world of industrial casting. ]It is the] sort of tool casting designers, tool makers, and foundry people are not used to having ... Well worth checking out.” And based on what I know of this latest version, I stand by that recommendation.

Thanks, Pal. -- Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today's Pick of the Week write-up.

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