A New Method for the Measurement of Flowability of Green Moulding Sand Nowa Metoda Pomiaru Płynności Klasycznej Masy Formierskiej

The production of castings by green sand moulds is a very important method for the manufacture of final products for different sectors of industry. In this green sand moulding process the quality of castings depends strongly on the quality of the mould, which in turn is determined by parameters such as the type of foundry machine, the characteristics of the moulding sand and the specifications of the patterns. The mould’s stability for use casting is achieved by filling and compacting moulding sand. This means, that the clay-bonded moulding sand is changed from the free flowing to the compacted state. In this process flowability is a very important parameter. Therefore, a variety of methods for the determination of flowability have been in use. However, it is fair to say that these methods do no longer meet the requirements of the modern moulding process. This paper introduces a new method for the determination of flowability of clay-bonded moulding sand using a specifically designed type of density sensor that was developed by a research team led by Professor Jürgen L. Bast at the Mechanical Department of Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg. The high levels of accuracy in the determination of flowability that this method is capable of achieving have been tested and indeed proven by varying sand parameters such as water and clay content, grain composition, mixing time, and compaction pressure. A further innovative characteristics of this new method of sensor-based flowability measurement is the possibility of using the sensor not only for the lab-based testing of sands but in the actual mould during the production process in the foundry, which allows to determine whether the sand in the mould has the required qualities based on real-time flowability measurements.