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Shaped castings, as a manufacturing process, dates to antiquity. However, the art of metal casting has increasingly become a science with the application of empirical methods. Constantly improving old processes or developing innovative processes substantiate the agility of metalcasting to continually meet evolving manufacturing requirements. For example, the lost foam process is meeting the challenge to produce engine blocks with high dimensional tolerance, smooth surface finish, and multiple complex internal passages. This paper explores the fruits of new developments that give designers unparalleled opportunities to apply casting processes to economically produce innovative designs with high integrity.

It is highly desirable to have a compression test of gasket materials (which are generally composites of fibers, fillers, and binders) since (1) a gasket tension testing (ANSI/ASTM F 152) does not represent the loading direction the material is used in service (anisotropic properties) and (2) there are generally significant differences between the tensile and compressive flow stress of composite materials. It is recognized that a compression test for axis-symmetric shapes is dominated by friction when low aspect ratio samples are used. It is predicted theoretically that when the sample aspect ratio approaches the interface coefficient of friction it may be possible to observe material flow in compression. Empirical observation of this fact has been made here and elsewhere.