Aluminium High Pressure Die Casting Application on Rear Frame Rails

Abstract

Due to the highly competitive environment in automotive industry and environmental restrictions, car manufacturers tend to use higher mechanical properties but better performance in lightweighting instead of traditional structural materials such as steel. Aluminium alloys are a good example of this application since they are 3 times lighter than steel. Aluminium is proposed to use in car body structure design because of its high performance of durability, and in addition with proper geometry and heat treatment the mechanical properties will be also valid for structural parts.  Using casting as a process enables to make topology optimization and having more complex shapes that has better strength but less weight with respect to sheet metal stamping.

Rear rail reinforcement support bracket is one of the most suitable component of body in white, where topologically optimized aluminium die casted part could be applied. In a conventional reinforcement support bracket, more than one steel stamped parts are used to have desired performance of stiffness and durability which results in much more complex structures in terms of design, formability and assembly. 

In this study, a new part designed and produced by high pressure casting method to obtain the same performance of current solution. Additionally to obtain better mechanical properties different heat treatments have been tested and the optimum heat treatment cycle has been determined. The new design has been compared to current one with virtual validation tools and the results have been given as comparison. 

Keywords

• Reinforcement Support Bracket,Al Alloy,High Pressure Die Casting,Body In White

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