INVESTMENT CASTING DESIGN & APPLICATIONS:

LESSONS LEARNED BY THE AEROSPACE SECTOR

Steven Kennerknecht
Consultant -- For more information, visit www.kennerknecht.net

Investment castings have been traditionally specified for applications requiring

exceptional accuracy, thin wall capability, complexity, and fine detail reproduction. From
jewelry and medical implants to larger industrial components, this process has evolved
due to both market demand as well as technology advancements.

The investment casting

process begins by
producing a wax pattern
employing a precision
mold, with similar
technology as used in
plastic injection molding.
The pattern is assembled
with gates and risers,
coated in ceramic layers
by programmed robots,
and is melted from the
mold, leaving a cavity into
which liquid alloy is cast.
The technology embraces
components from a few
centimeters to more than
1.5 m in overall size.

Most castings are produced from

a tooling master and specialty
wax patterns, labeling this
process as one of the most
accurate of all liquid metal forming
processes available. The
production injection tools are
accurate to 5 one hundredths of a
mm (0.002”), and are commonly
constructed by machining directly
from CAD/CAM databases used
in the original component design.
Alternately, time and money can
be saved making samples by
employing expendable rapid
prototype patterns, built from the
design CAD file. (Casting and
SLA pattern (right) shown here).
Efficient casting designs take
advantage of being able to
combine numerous sub
assemblies and features into
a single structure, thereby
reducing costly joints,
machining and weight of the
final structure. What makes
the investment casting
process so unique is the
ability to cast thin walls using
a preheated mold and
attainment of predictable
mechanical properties by
actively controlling the
solidification speed of the
alloy.

Investment Casting Markets in a Nutshell

With the decline of the military

hardware market in the late 1980’s,
many investment casters looked for
alternate market places for their built
up capacity. Numerous companies
diversified into commercial products
such as high end automotive (F1 &
Nascar), industrial parts (printers,
telecommunications, instruments), and
recreational/medical products (cycles,
artificial limbs, firearms). The
commercial aero-engine market was
one of the first to convert from sand
and plaster mold to investment casting
for lighter and higher accuracy parts.
Air intake fan frame structures and
gearboxes are now commonplace
applications today (seen here).

The journey to develop larger structural airframe castings for both military and
commercial programs has evolved significantly over the past decade. Once limited to a
few military and engine programs, structural investment castings are being increasingly
considered as an alternative in mainstream airframe construction.
Thin Walls + Rapid Solidification = Investment Casting Growth

A few suppliers pursued rapid solidification techniques that combined the thin wall
capability of investment casting with fine alloy microstructure, improving static and
fatigue properties of A356, D357 and C355 alloys.

The structural aluminum casting market has been traditionally been served by premium
sand castings. Chemically set sands, extensive use of metallic chills, exotic ingate
filling/filtration systems, mold pre-heat, and use of post casting machining/sanding
operations, had enabled a few advanced suppliers to produce advanced structures for
testing. Large airplane applications such as the YC-14 bulkhead and F-16 vertical tail
gained much attention but little acceptance from conservative airframers. Walls were too
heavy, draft angle a problem for fasteners, and mechanical properties “spotty” with
variations in strength from gate to chill locations. The experience gained, however,
enabled advanced material properties, Military Design Handbooks (MIL-HDBK-V), and
commercial aerospace (AMS 4241/4249) specifications to be developed. Other
applications such as machined gearboxes, engine parts, and missile bodies gained
greater commercial success.

In order to capture a portion of the lucrative aluminum commercial airframe market,

Howmet-Aluminum and others began development of a series of technologies in the
early 1980s in order to combine the thin wall capability of investment casting with high
strengths achieved through rapid solidification. Engineers developed several processes,
all based upon casting aluminum alloy into a pre-heated ceramic shell mold, and
subsequently extracting the metal superheat in a controlled and rapid manner. As
superheat needed to be extracted through the relatively insulating ceramic shell mold,
large thermal gradients were needed to move heat quickly enough from the solidifying
casting. Some processes were extremely efficient in heat removal but placed restrictions
on shell mold size or geometry. Other processes could handle larger structures but
provided sufficiently rapid solidification in thinner wall sections only. Finally a process
was developed which could handle large parts and efficiently solidify both thin and heavy
walled sections. The “Sophia” process combined the best of investment casting features
with rapidly solidified cast and dense microstructure. Since then other foundries have
developed competitive technologies to achieve similar performance.

Pros and Cons:

The investment casting industry

has literally designed and opened
the doors in the aerospace industry
because of the opportunities it had
offered. The process has the ability
to achieve precision tolerances,
combine numerous previously used
detail sub assemblies, achieve
predictable levels of static and
fatigue resistance, and is inherently
corrosion resistant. The pressurized
door sub-structure shown here is one of several, on commercial jets.
A disadvantage of using investment casting for aerospace is the number of iterations
involved to make a sound casting, and establish a fixed process for manufacture. As
design or quality needs may change quickly, re-qualification of the casting also ads time
to the overall program milestone. Cost is a factor that can enrich or detract from
investment casting. Some components are ideal for complex castings, reducing
assembly and machining, which reduces cost. Others have a simple configurations and
can be made faster through another process, such as high speed machining.

Design Drivers:

Investment casting provides the capability to sculpt monolithic cast structures that
replace multi-piece fabrications and chunky machined from solid hog-outs. This has
created a new paradigm for manufacturing engineers to consider, when designing new
structures. Design properties attributed to investment casting include:

• Castings with isotropic properties have identical material properties in all

directions, as opposed to the large differences between longitudinal and
transverse properties of wrought alloys commonly used. This means that stress
engineers can simplify their analysis and use a single level of material properties
on finite element modeling of their 3D CAD designs.

• The integral stiffening capability of

investment castings with complex “T”
stiffeners, return flanges, undulating walls,
and co-incidental fluid coring passageways
offers improved designs in both static and
dynamic loading cases because stresses are
more efficiently transferred from one point
load to the entire structure. This allows the
designer to reduce wall thickness overall and
save weight.

• In traditional fabrications, fastener (bolts/rivets) flexibility, stress risers in fastener

holes, and variations in fastener installations result in design knockdown factors
for strength, which are not applied to single piece castings. Structures also
usually fail at joints (overload/fatigue/corrosion), and reduction of joints makes
the structure more reliable and predictable in service.

• Classical assemblies are made by assembling numerous machined or bent

sheet-metal parts. As each part has it’s own small dimensional variation, stacking
numerous parts together multipies the error overall. Tolerance stack-up, metal
shims to adjust these interface areas, or use of liquid shims, and need for in-the-
field customized joints, are costly drivers in conventional structures. Castings are
unitary structures with a centralized datum structure and guaranteed (machined)
interface points for accurate fit.
• Stress redistribution of monolithic casting
design, eliminates concerns of conventional
beam and frame assemblies buckling and
failing at predictable loads on the built up
assembly. Improved designs in single piece
castings enable applied loads to be
distributed throughout the structure more
efficiently. Similarly, defects such as holes
or saw cuts introduced into the structure do
not propagate freely due to the ability of
stresses to redistribute and move
throughout the balance of the structure.
Shown here is a pressurized door
substructure for a business jet.

• Junctions of walls for a structure usually occur at mounting lugs or attach points.
Conventional machined “hog-out” shapes often fly with excessive weight, as it
usually is not feasible to machine away low stress material in tight inaccessible
areas. Casting designs work in concert with 3D FEA analysis, enabling the
designer to thin and thicken sections based upon load requirements rather than
producibility constraints.

• Crack arrest features on castings and fabrications differ in concept. Traditional

fabrications may employ multi-piece members fastened together to form either a
redundant structure, or one where the crack grows to the extremity of a single
sub-assembly. Cast designs must be more creative to achieve crack arrest or
load redundancy, however, and may employ step sections, parallel ribs and
integral stiffening to both arrest damage in service, as well as provide redundant
load paths for overstress conditions.

• Inspect-ability of complex assemblies often requires complete teardown of the

structure, with removal of fasteners and finishes in order to check for cracks. The
smooth monolithic nature of cast structures makes crack detection in the field
much easier.

• Stiffness of larger structures and dynamic performance are often dramatically

improved by replacing several assembled components with a one-piece casting.
Investment casting is an ideal choice for moderate size complex structures
because a single stiffened structure is always mechanically superior to one which
has stiffening elements bolted together, even though the overall mechanical
properties of the cast material is lower than the base-line wrought assembly.
Examples include large passenger and regional jet access doors. On one
particular RJ application, converting to casting saved 107 details, 913 fasteners,
6 pounds of weight, and >30% of recurring costs.
Rapid Acceptance:

Investment casting’s unique capability to combine thin walls, large sizes and close
tolerances with elevated static and dynamic mechanical properties in the early 1990s
created a unique market niche for the industry. The existing state of the industry could
best be summarized by the following:

• Castings have fantastic opportunity to save weight, reduce joints, improve

accuracy and lower cost, compared to traditional airframe “built up” structure.
• Castings need to be machined, finished and assembled for the OEM, in order to
replace similar built-up structure supplied on previous aircraft programs
• The new casting technology has been shown to be viable in production
• Market conditions have now produced numerous capable suppliers
• Continued OEM interest has been shown by manufacturers worldwide
• Momentum in Europe is strong due to active new aircraft programs
• North American OEMs are stalled with added applications, pending new aircraft
• Component market value and manufacturing costs have become better known
• Lessons learned by industry pioneers paved way for other suppliers and OEMs

While tremendous progress has been made to date, and the technology is considered to
be fairly mature, many lessons were learned by early pioneers (both suppliers and OEM
design engineers) who promoted the technology and created a new way of building and
specifying complex airframe hardware. Growing pains were encountered while adapting
the technology to produce numerous demanding commercial airframe applications in a
limited amount of time. Key issues included the following:

• Technology developed for the military and turbine engine market was introduced
to the faster paced commercial airframe industry, and quickly adopted.
• The industry leader, being years ahead of other suppliers in technology,
navigated and developed a new marketplace without prior industry benchmarks.
• New expectations, specifications and completion services demanded by OEMs
changed supplier overhead and infrastructure, impacting mfg. cost assumptions.
• Concepts of surface finish expectations, fixed process interpretation, NDT
specification interpretation, and weld rework allowance were resolved “on the fly”
and during production scale-up, impacting the flow of product to the program.
• Single source of supply for advanced designs were initially considered
acceptable risks. The ability however to “ramp up” and replace older sheetmetal
and machined assemblies with new castings on mature programs (ex: CRJ200,
B737, C-17) was hindered, due to the dozens of applications competing for
limited resources at one supplier.
Lessons Learned for all Industry:

It is often said that early pioneers in a particular market sector often learn through the
school of hard knocks and experience, while not necessarily surviving the success of
their initial vision. Work conducted by leading edge aerospace OEM designers and
engineers in concert with the precision casting industry pioneers, has resulted in great
advances, learning and changes on both sides.

Today the market has a developed supply base with numerous high technology capable
suppliers world wide. Applications have expanded from commercial to military, and from
aerospace to formula one race cars. As with most technology, advances come at a
price, with irrevocable change. Advanced foundries with elevated mechanical property
capability, and the infrastructure to deliver machined/finished/assembled structures to
desirous OEMs, have now risen up the supply chain themselves. With this evolution, key
suppliers have now become specialized and bear a larger infrastructure and higher
overhead. A two tier supply base may evolve where more sophisticated suppliers are
unable to compete on classical applications of more mundane castings, and smaller
foundries are unable to assemble the staff and technology needed to supply the industry
with complete assemblies from 3D CAD data files. Either way, the OEMs have tasted
success, and are demanding more suppliers to step up to the plate and produce these
components for them.

Shown here is the assembly of 6

thrust reverser cascades, 4
structural longerons, and other
precision cast components
(painted white), to produce the
working nacelle parts for a major
military application.

The author wishes to acknowledge the following corporations for material in the
preparation of this paper: Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Systems Company, PCC
Wyman Gordon, Microfusion SA, Honeywell, Thyssen Feinguss GMBH, and Uni-Cast
Inc.

About the Author: Steven Kennerknecht is a 20 year veteran of the investment casting
industry, and is consulting for Uni-Cast Inc. in Manchester New Hampshire.