Gm Global Technolgoy Operations, Inc.

Suresh Sundarraj

Anil Kumar Sachdev

Parag Agarwal

Arun Kumar

Michael J Walker

Sugato Chakrabarty

Unitary closure panels for automotive vehicles may be formed to have regions of different materials by a spray casting process. Separate sprays of different materials, for example two different metal alloys, are applied to touching regions of a spray application surface. The separate sprays may be applied sequentially or simultaneously to the forming surface to coat the respective regions so that the regions are contiguous or overlapping and a unitary body is formed. The spray formed body may be compressed and trimmed between facing surfaces to form a vehicle closure panel of specified outline, curvature, thickness, and porosity.

Spray cast mixed-material vehicle closure panels

A casting chamber configured to form a casting from molten material includes an outer mold, a plurality of inner core elements, and a surface portion of a thermal chill device. The thermal chill device includes first and second interchangeable elements with the surface portion of the thermal chill device including one of a first surface portion of the first interchangeable element and a second surface portion of the second interchangeable element. The first surface portion of the first interchangeable element includes an insulating material and the second surface portion of the second interchangeable element comprising a metallic material.

Method and apparatus for forming a casting

One embodiment includes an insert including a body portion; a plurality of tabs extending from the body portion, wherein the tabs are tapered; and wherein the insert is constructed and arranged to provide damping.

Insert with tabs and damped products and methods of making the same

Residual stress is reduced in light metal alloy articles, e.g. aluminum alloy articles, formed as castings against a sand casting mold body by incorporating a wax composition of suitable softening or melting temperature with the sand particles of the mold or core body. The hot cast metal heats adjoining surfaces of the mold body. As the cooling metal forms a solid shell, the surrounding sand particle and wax mixture are heated sufficiently to melt or soften the wax incorporated on or between sand particles. This softens portions of the rigid mold body that could otherwise restrain shrinking surfaces of the casting and produce unwanted stressed regions that are retained in the casting and must be removed by subsequent processing.

Reducing residual stresses during sand casting

A method for generating a manufacturing process map comprises obtaining sets of N-dimensional expert data from at least three sources, defining a membership function for each set of expert data, applying fuzzy logic operations to said membership functions to generate new membership functions, the new membership functions defining N-dimensional regions within an N-dimensional design space and using one of said N-dimensional regions to generate the manufacturing process map.

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Bengaluru, India

Suresh Sundarraj