Numerical Simulation of the Wax Injection Process for Investment Casting

The dimensions of the wax pattern overwhelmingly determine the final quality of an investment casting component, therefore it's very important to know the deformation and local dimension changing of the wax pattern, and as a result, learn how to modify the tooling design. As the most promising way with the advantages in cost and period, numerical simulation learns what exactly happens inside the tooling when the wax is injected, and how the pattern will change with the cooling and demolding. This article achieved some material properties by some measures used for application in polymer study, and then constructed a thin-walled 3D model of the wax injection process. The predicted results, like filling time, shrinkage, etc., were compared with those of experimental data. A qualitative agreement between them with an acceptable difference in shrinkage was reported, and the optimization of location of the injection gates was discussed as well.