Safety assessment of sand casting explosion accidents through on-site testing and numerical simulation of the temperature variation in sand molds to protect employee health

Sand casting explosion accidents will cause serious casualties, and measures should be adopted to prevent these consequences. The purpose of this study was to investigate the evolution mechanism of sand casting explosion accidents. The temperature variations in sand molds were investigated based on on-site testing and numerical simulation. The evolution characteristics of sand casting explosion accidents were analyzed by fault tree analysis, chaos theory and synthetic theory model. The results showed that the temperature at the monitoring point rose rapidly once the energy of molten steel was transferred to the sand mold and then dropped slowly. The closer the monitoring point is to the interface of the casting, the higher the temperature is at the monitoring point. The moisture content in the sand mold is a key factor for sand casting explosion accidents. Sand casting explosion accidents exhibit sensitivity and inherent randomness and are affected by employee, object, environmental and management factors. The organizational factors of sand casting explosion accidents are remote causes, and social factors are basic causes. The findings with respect to sand casting explosion accidents can be regarded as the foundation of accident prevention in practice.