ProLoK

About the project

The transformation in the automotive industry away from combustion engines to e-mobility has far-reaching consequences for automotive suppliers. Components that have been widely used to date, such as housings in piston engine construction, are becoming less and less important for German die casters. Structural components in ductile alloys with high quality requirements, on the other hand, are playing an increasingly important role. In order to maintain or expand the economic relevance of the die casting process, it is necessary to enable further applications for die cast components. Increased demands on the casting process can be derived from the increasing use of non-age-hardenable die casting alloys of high strength/ductility, the trend towards further increased functional integration or mixed material designs, as well as from the requirement for CO2-neutral production and generally stricter environmental regulations. Among other things, the focus here is primarily on joining technology. Currently, components to be adhesively bonded have to be pretreated at great expense before the joining process. Particularly for structural bonding when using non-age-hardenable alloys, this results in a high level of effort to ensure that the surfaces of the die cast components are suitable for adhesive bonding, which currently hinders the use of such joints.

The aim of the research project is to control the local casting conditions and the local suitability for adhesive bonding of the cast components without costly pretreatments, while at the same time reducing their environmental footprint. In this context, both the surface exposure to release agents and the surface morphology based on the real alloy composition have to be considered. To this end, the research project plans to analyze the empirical data obtained through virtual and experimental material characterization and to identify additional main effects. Based on investigations of the thermal effective ranges of release agent components, the resulting surface coatings are to be explained and predicted. At the same time, a possibility is to be created to predict the local suitability for adhesive bonding of a die-cast component in the process simulation as a function of the release agent used already during the design phase. In further investigations, the surface morphologies arising during solidification are to be analyzed and evaluated as a function of the alloy composition in order to enable local, ageing-resistant bonding without costly surface pretreatments.