Stress analysis in solid-liquid parts of solidifying castings

In the paper, we present results of stress analysis in domains which are a mixture of solid and liquid phases. Such mixtures occur in solidifying castings and are a result of forming a structure with solid skeleton and filling of a liquid phase. In this structure, stress occurs due to the appearance of temperature gradients, different values of material properties for the solid and liquid phase, and the appearance of friction forces between the solidified part of the casting and the mold on a macroscopic scale. This can lead to casting defects, such as hot cracking. The results are obtained with the use of a authors computer program based on the Finite Element Method. The stress analysis takes into account the elastic-plastic state of considered computational area. The presented results are focused on the microscopic scale, for which a finite element mesh is created which imitates the growing grains of the metal alloy in the casting, on the basis of macroscopic parameters.