EFFECT OF POROSITY ON THE FATIGUE LIFE OF CAST AC4C-T6 ALLOY FOR LCD GLASS TRANSFER ROBOT

Aluminium has good corrosion properties and a high strength to weight reduction which makes it favourable in many applications. The increased use of aluminium casting in the automotive industry does also imply that the need for design data for aluminium increases. Especially for castings, the influences of casting defects are always an issue. For this reason fatigue properties for as-cast sand and permanent mould specimens with different contents of porosity have been studied. The cast aluminium specimens of two different porosities were fatigue tested in cyclic axial test at R=-1. Prior to fatigue test specimens were examined by CT-scan and sorted into two quality groups depending on the porosity level.

The aim of this work was to investigate the fatigue life for cast AC4C-T6 alloy with different amounts of inherent porosity. An additional aim was to predict the durability for cast components with defect constrained in a specified volume of components, by using a commercial program MSC. Fatigue.