Development of pressure control system in counter gravity casting for large thin-walled A357 aluminum alloy components

Counter gravity casting equipments(CGCE) were widely used to produce large thin-walled A357 aluminum alloy components. To improve the pressure control precision of CGCE to get high quality castings, a pressure control system based on fuzzy-PID hybrid control technology and the digital assembled valve was developed. The actual pressure tracking experiment results show that the special system by applying PID controller and fuzzy controller to varied phases, is not only able to inherit the small error and good static stability of classical PID control, but also has fuzzy control's advantage of fully adapting itself to the object. The pressure control error is less than 0.3 kPa. By using this pressure control system, large complex thin-walled A357 aluminum alloy castings with high quality was successfully produced.