Paris, France, August 21, 2006 – ESI Group (ESIN FR0004110310) is pleased to announce the new release of ProCAST 2006, the leading finite element software package for foundry simulation. This new version brings additional new features in meshing, processing capabilities and numerous improvements in product performance. The ProCAST solutions include automatic mesh generation, thermal analysis with radiation effects, flow analysis for mould filing, fully coupled thermal, flow and stress analysis, and advanced metallurgical options.

Three main improvements deserve to be highlighted:

ProCAST 2006 can predict porosity by taking into account graphite expansion phenomenon in nodular cast iron. Indeed, in this specific material the formation of graphite nodules during solidification leads to a volume expansion. The capacity of ProCAST 2006 to couple local microstructure calculations with porosity predictions is a real benefit for the cast iron industry.

With the delivery of ProCAST 2006 an important progress has been made: the meshing time for models that took hours to mesh previously, takes only minutes with the new version. This improvement is also due to the use of Geomesh, the ESI Group tool for geometry analysis and repair, whose interface allows the use of major industrial native CAD files formats.

Parallel processing of mould filling and solidification was already included in the previous ProCAST release. With this new ProCAST 2006 version, the stress module is now fully parallelized, allowing the complete casting process to be simulated in hours.

“ProCAST 2006 new release is a clear sign of ESI Group commitment to provide- 1) state-of-the-art software capabilities to the casting industry allowing full coupling between filling, solidification, stress, porosity and microstructural features and - 2) allowing even the most complex processes to be simulated overnight providing foundries the capacity to test more mould designs in less time” says Marco Gremaud, Casting Solutions Product Manager, ESI Group.

For more information, please contact either your ESI Group’s representative or visit www.esi-group.com.

ESI Group’s Casting Solution

Casting process simulation is now widely accepted as an important tool in product design and process development to improve casting yield and quality. ESI Group’s casting portfolio includes ProCAST,

the market leading finite element solution for casting process simulation, CALCOSOFT, for fast and efficient modeling of continuous casting processes and PAM-QUIKCAST, the finite difference solution for casting process evaluation.

ProCAST 2005 has received the European Technology Leadership of the Year Award from Frost & Sullivan

About ESI Group

ESI Group is a world-leading supplier, and a pioneer of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes that take into account the physics of materials. ESI Group has developed an extensive suite of coherent, industry oriented applications to realistically simulate a product’s behavior during testing, to fine-tune manufacturing processes in accordance with desired product performance, and evaluate the environment’s impact on product performance. ESI Group’s products, which have a proven track record in manufacturing and have been combined in multi-trade value chains, represent a unique collaborative and open virtual engineering solution known as the Virtual Try-Out Space (VTOS), enabling virtual prototypes to be improved in a continuous and collaborative manner. This integrated protocol allows all the company’s solutions to work with each other and with applications developed by independent software vendors. By significantly reducing costs and development lead times and enabling product/process synergies, VTOS solutions offer major competitive advantage by progressively eliminating the need for physical prototypes during product development. The company generated sales of €62.2m in 2005, employs over 500 high-level specialists worldwide covering more than 30 countries. ESI Group is listed in Eurolist compartment C of Euronext Paris. For further information, visit www.esi-group.com.

Virtual Try-Out Space® and VTOS® are registered trademarks of ESI Group. All other products, names or companies are the brands or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

	Influence of microstructure on porosity and piping behaviour of cast iron
(a)	(b)
Plot of porosity and piping when considering graphite expansion (a) and not considering graphite expansion (b) for a nodular cast iron part. Source ESI Group

ESI Group - Press Relations                                            

Nathalie David-Franc                                               

nathalie.david-franc@esi-group.com                                  

Phone : + 33 (0)1 41 73 58 35