Asee peer logo

Laboratory Experiment for Improving Understanding of Grain Refinement in Aluminum Castings

Download Paper |

Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Engineering Technology Division (ETD) Technical Session 2

Tagged Division

Engineering Technology Division (ETD)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43929

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43929

Download Count

119

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Wei Vian Purdue University at West Lafayette

visit author page

Dr. Wei Vian is an assistant professor of practice in Purdue University’s School of Engineering Technology at the West Lafayette campus, where she teaches mechanics and materials courses. Her current research focuses on exploring teaching methods to increase student success in the courses she teaches, and past research includes exploring grain refining in aluminum castings. Dr. Vian received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2016.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

Abstract Grain refinement is a technique applied widely in the manufacture of metal components to improve mechanical properties and understanding of the technique is valuable to those in a metal manufacturing industry and those that design metal components. As such, the development of grain structure in manufactured metal components is introduced to students of engineering technology in their first semester at xxxxxx University. To enhance course content understanding and improve learning efficiency, a lab-based group experiment that utilizes a materials-based grain refinement technique for aluminum castings was designed for use in a Materials and Processes course. In this project, students performed a designed experiment by manufacturing two groups of tensile specimens using a sand casting process with pure molten aluminum and pure aluminum with the addition of a grain refiner and testing their hardness and tensile strength. The students are provided with a print of the casting with rigging and are required to demonstrate the ability to calculate the weight of grain refiner master alloy and pure aluminum to be mixed in the preparation of the melt, estimate the solidification time of the casting with Chvorinov's rule, and complete most aspects of the casting, specimen preparation, and property testing processes. The final deliverable of the experiment is a laboratory report of professional quality that includes statistical analysis of the mechanical properties. This paper compares the students’ grain structure related learning outcome achievements in respect to their previous exams as well as to the outcomes of previous students that completed a sand casting laboratory of a previous design.

Vian, W. (2023, June), Laboratory Experiment for Improving Understanding of Grain Refinement in Aluminum Castings Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43929

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015