This article describes the Virtual Aluminum Castings methodology, which was developed and implemented at Ford Motor Company and demonstrates the feasibility and benefits of integrated computational materials engineering. Computational approaches to simulating the thermal history of an aluminum part, predicting the resulting microstructural evolution, predicting local mechanical behavior, and, ultimately, predicting component durability are discussed. Commercial software is used as the backbone for the method.

Citation: Allison, J., Li, M., Wolverton, C. and Su, X., "Virtual Aluminum Castings: An Industrial Application of ICME," JOM, (November 2006) 28-35.

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