Hitachi Industry & Control Begins Sales of "ADSTEFAN Ver. 2019" Casting Simulation System

Hitachi Industry & Control Solutions, Ltd. (“Hitachi Industry & Control”) today announced the beginning of sales of the casting simulation system ADSTEFAN Ver. 2019 starting March 1, 2019, in Japan and April 1, 2019, in India, China and Southeast Asia. ADSTEFAN Ver. 2019 is newly equipped with an in-mold gas flow analysis function for sand casting, as well as the ability to improve accuracy of existing functions and reduce time required for analysis. It enables simulations that are closer to reality than conventional methods which considers the motion of the gas generated during sand casting inside the molds. With these characteristics, ADSTEFAN Ver. 2019 supports further reduction of the development term and improvement of product quality for casting. ADSTEFAN Ver. 2019 supports three languages: Japanese, English and Chinese. Hitachi Industry & Control aims to sell 150 licenses annually to research, design, development and production divisions for social infrastructure, automobiles, transportation equipment, industrial machines and machine tools of Japanese and overseas companies. ADSTEFAN is a casting simulation system which predicts the casting defects that occur in fields related to the production of base stocks. It simulates flow of molten metals into the molds and state of solidification, which are not directly visible, and visualizes the process as three-dimensional images. With this configuration, the new system enables a decline in the number of trial manufacturers, supporting the reduction of development term and improvement of product quality. Since the start of sales of ADSTEFAN in 1999, its functions and product performance have been frequently expanded and improved in response to demand from user companies, based on the results of joint research performed with academic organizations, partner companies and the likes. This system has been upgraded year on year. Recently, the development of products with new concepts that respond to diversified needs has accelerated even in the automobile and transportation industries, infrastructure industry etc. Under these circumstances, for the parts constituting the products, it is necessary and desirable that the shape should be more complex; weight to be reduced; durability to be improved; delivery time to be shortened and costs to be reduced. The accuracy and efficiency of the simulation are both expected to improve in the process of casting simulation. The users of ADSTEFAN engaged in sand casting of industrial parts request functions to simulate the motion of gases generated due to the combustion of binders (1) inside the molds due to the heat from the molten metal, because such gases may cause casting defects. In response to the above user demand, Hitachi Industry & Control developed the in-mold gas flow analysis function, which simulates the motion of gases generated inside the molds during the solidification of casting, through joint research with the Anzai Laboratory of Tohoku University. Further, Hitachi Industry & Control implemented demonstrations in the Research Center for Casting Technology of Iwate University, which boasts knowledge about sand casting and a large number of test devices. As a result, the system has been verified to have sufficient simulation performance, and the in-mold gas flow analysis function was newly installed in ADSTEFAN Ver. 2019. It is possible to perform product designs with consideration for gas flow using the results of analysis from this function. As an expansion of the existing functions, the function for rotating mobile objects has been added and the accuracy of tracking the behavior of markers for analysis of fluid flow (2) has been improved, making it possible to carry out simulations that are closer to reality. ADSTEFAN is further equipped with a function for shortening the analysis time by increasing the speed processes for visualizing analysis results. With the above new functions and expansions, ADSTEFAN supports the further shortening of development time and improvement of product quality.