Optimisation of heat transfer between casting and mould

A numerical procedure is presented to obtain a desirable cooling pattern in castings by optimising the inter-facial heat transfer rate between the cas ting and the mould. A novel model is introduced to simulate the casting-mou ld interfacial heat transfer in a finite element formulation. An optimisati on algorithm for finding the set of optimum heat transfer coefficients for a specific casting design is described. The computational performance of th e proposed algorithm is improved by using a highly efficient sensitivity an alysis method. The performance of the inter-facial heat transfer model is a ssessed by solving a two-dimensional problem. Finally, an investment castin g problem is studied and the use of the proposed method is demonstrated.