dimension was varied to investigate the effect of the casting dimension.
All castings weremadeusing the full mold casting process.
The dimensions of the casting patterns are shown in Fig. 1. The temperature
of the casting was measured with an ungrounded type N thermocouple (the outer diameter of the stainless steel thermocouple probe was 2.3mm) inserted at the center of the casting, as shown in Fig. 1.
The castings were made from an aluminum alloy (the chemical composition is shown in Table 2); the liquidus and solidus temperatures of thealuminumalloy were 572 ◦Cand 494 ◦C, respectively, and were obtained by a thermal analysis.
The pouring temperature of the casting was 780 ◦C. In the experiments with the
furan sand mold, the molten alloy was poured 90–120 min after molding. In the experiments using the green sand mold, the mold was hand-rammed, and the molten alloy was poured immediately after molding.