StaCast Project: from a Survey of European Aluminium Alloys Foundries to New Standards on Defect Classification and on Mechanical Potential of Casting Alloys

StaCast (New Quality and Design Standards for Aluminium Alloys Cast Products) is a European project devoted to aluminium foundries, with the ambitious goal to set up advanced quality standards or technical reports for aluminium alloy castings. The project is aimed at developing a new classification of the castings’ structural defects and at stating the limits of acceptability for the envisaged final destinations. Achieving this goal will significantly help foundries in reducing the cost of nonquality, while improving the competitive edge of companies, with the addition of important advantages as for energy costs. To do this, StaCast carried out a wide survey among European foundries, to describe the main features of their production, at which extent they are using EU standards, their needs of information, documents and new standard tools referred to defects, mechanical properties and mechanical design of Al alloy castings. This paper presents the main results of such survey, with about 80 Companies involved, as well as the key-issues of the pre-normative documents which have been elaborated on Defects Classification and on Mechanical Potential of Aluminium Casting Alloys.