Abstract: Casting industry is critical to the national economy. However there exists big gap between the casting technologies at home and abroad. One of the important future trends is the application of numerical simulation technique to substitute the traditional empirical research methods. Numerical simulation has become the necessary way to up-grade the traditional casting industries and been paid with much more attention. With the mature of macro-modeling of casting process, micro-modeling and multi-scale modeling become one of the hottest research frontiers attracting many researchers and engineers. The current research hotspots and the development trends of modeling of casting processes are mainly introduced, especially on the mold filling and solidification processes of net shape casting, the stress and strain analyses, the prediction of the formation and evolution of microstructure and the multi-scale modeling under concurrent engineering environment. At the same time, the related achievements in our country are given with special em-phasis.

Key words: Microstructure simulation, Modeling and simulation, Multi-scale modeling, Net shape casting, Stress analysis