Reducing energy consumption, reducing environmental pollution and saving limited resources are a very important and urgent task facing all countries today. Driven by the general trend of lightweighting of products such as automobiles, it can be expected that my country's light metal casting market will develop significantly in the next 10 years. The proportion of aluminum and magnesium alloy castings in major casting producing countries is between 13% and 19%, and some countries (such as Italy) are as high as 30% to 40%, while the proportion of aluminum and magnesium alloy castings in my country is less than 10%. More than 90% of aluminum castings in developed countries are used in the automotive parts manufacturing industry.
In my country, there are still many problems to be solved for aluminum alloy castings to form large-scale production and meet the requirements of lightweighting of automobiles:
First, the requirements of automobiles for aluminum castings are developing in the direction of thin walls, complex shapes, high strength and high quality. In order to meet this requirement, the casting process should be further optimized and new alloy materials should be developed.
Second, the production cost should be reduced from the perspective of design and process, such as using one-mold-multiple-piece technology and automation technology to improve productivity, extend the service life of molds, and adopt integrated design to reduce the number of parts.
Third, computer simulation technology should be used to shorten the development cycle of process solutions.
Fourth, efforts should be made to increase the recycling of aluminum. Recycled aluminum is the main raw material for aluminum casting. While developing the foundry industry, my country should pay attention to the utilization of recycled aluminum resources, develop technologies to effectively separate aluminum from waste materials composed of composite materials and heterogeneous materials, and establish a wide range of waste recycling systems.
