In the field of automobile, rail transit and aerospace equipment manufacturing, lightweight materials and manufacturing technology occupy a very important position. Aluminum, magnesium and other light metal materials, as well as high-performance steel materials and their forming technology are important parts of lightweight materials and processes. As “made in China 2025” has become a national strategy, innovation driven, intelligent transformation and green development have become the development direction of manufacturing industry, and the development of lightweight materials and manufacturing technology has become more and more important.

The development trend of aluminum and magnesium alloy casting forming technology is high performance, high efficiency and low cost. Advanced casting technologies, such as squeeze casting, high vacuum die casting and semi-solid forming, which can obtain high density and high performance parts and easily realize automation and intelligence, will become an important means of lightweight manufacturing in the fields of automobile, rail transit and aerospace.

Squeeze casting is an advanced casting process that applies high pressure to liquid metal to solidify and form, and obtain high density and high performance parts. Squeeze casting is applied to light metal materials, which can achieve high performance and lightweight parts forming manufacturing. Typical applications in vehicle and transportation manufacturing, such as steering knuckle, control arm, subframe, wheel of light combat vehicle, are shown in Figure 1. For the alloy with wide solidification temperature range and serious shrinkage tendency, squeeze casting has obvious advantages, which can obtain high density structure parts.