In modern times, there are increasing requirements for products quality in every part of manufacturing industry and in foundry industry it
is not different. That is why a lot of foundries are researching, how to effectively produce castings with high quality. This article is dealing
with search of the influence of using different types of risers or chills on shrinkage cavity production in ductile iron castings. Differently
shaped risers were designed using the Wlodawer´s modulus method and test castings were poured with and without combination of chills.
Efficiency of used risers and chills was established by the area of created shrinkage cavity using the ultrasound nondestructive method.
There are introduced the production process of test castings and results of ultrasound nondestructive reflective method. The object of this
work is to determine an optimal type of riser or chill for given test casting in order to not use overrated risers and thus increase the cost
effectiveness of the ductile iron castings production.
Presented paper shows the mathematical and numerical approaches for modelling of binary alloy solidification solved by the Finite Element Method (FEM). The phenomenon of shrinkage cavities formation process is included in the numerical model. Multiple macroscopic cavities can be modelled within the single casting volume. Solid, liquid and gaseous phases with different material properties are taken into account during solidification process. Mathematical model uses the differential equation of heat diffusion. Modification of specific heat is used to describe the heat releasing during liquid-solid phase change. Numerical procedure of shrinkage cavities evolution is based on the recognition of non-connected liquid volumes and local shrinkage computation in the each of them. The recognition is done by the selection of sets of interconnected nodes containing liquid phase in the finite element mesh. Original computer program was developed to perform calculation process. Obtained results of temperature and shrinkage cavities distributions are presented and discussed in details.