**3. MAGMASoft Simulations for Casting Specimens**

A usual practice in mechanical characterization of metal castings is extracting the specimens from plates, blocks, rods or even actual cast parts. This approach is reasonable when the properties and behavior of actual castings need to be determined under static and dynamic loading. The process-oriented nature of this work demands considering fatigue specimens shown in Figure 2 as a simple cast part. Therefore, a mold is initially designed and simulated to understand filling and solidification behavior and defect predictions, followed by its optimization to minimize porosities.

**Figure 2.** Fatigue specimen geometry (All dimensions are in mm).

Casting simulations are set up in MAGMASoft using different perspectives within the software. To begin with, casting layout, i.e., assembly of components, such as pouring basin, sprue, runner, gates, casting, risers, etc., is either drawn or imported from a CAD software in the *Geometry* perspective. A mold is also created in the same perspective. Next, the casting layout and mold is discretized using *Mesh* perspective. Following mesh generation, material (cast alloy and mold) properties and process parameters are defined using the *Definition* perspective. If needed, *Optimization* perspective can be used to set criteria for autonomous optimization of casting layout. The required results are defined, and simulation settings are done using the *Simulation* perspective. At the end of the simulation, the results are viewed in the *Results* perspective. A flow chart of the simulation sequence in MAGMASoft is presented in Figure 3.

**Figure 3.** Simulation sequence in MAGMASoft.

The optimized mold designs for casting fatigue specimens are developed as follows:


The details of mold design optimization are presented in the following sub-sections.
