Investment Casting (IC), using the wax pattern, produces metal parts with a high surface finish and complex geometries within acceptable tolerances. However, removing the wax patterns can have processing challenges, such as thermal expansion during wax melting for pattern removal leading to shell cracking defects, the release of hydrocarbons from melting wax, and the burnt residue from this process. To overcome these challenges, it has been proposed to replace wax with ice as a pattern material. Ice has an inherent benefit of reduction of volume during its phase change from solid to liquid. It helps to reduce cracking due to expansion. Rapid Freeze Prototyping (RFP) and Freeze Cast Process (FCP) can produce the ice pattern. In the process of Rapid Ice Investment Casting (RIIC), the ice pattern is invested with a low-temperature ceramic slurry to make ceramic shells for metal casting. Sublimation is used for ice pattern evacuation at sub-zero conditions using a vacuum. Estimating various properties like time for total sublimation, concentration gradient, and energy usage are vital for process characterization and optimization. A diffusion-based mathematical model has been proposed and experimentally verified to sublimate the ice patterns in this research. Experimental results show a close correlation (96.74%) with the theoretical model. The demonstration of ice investment casting has been carried out, and it reported close dimensional accuracy.

熔模铸造 (IC)使用蜡模，在可接受的公差范围内生产具有高表面光洁度和复杂几何形状的金属零件。然而，去除蜡模可能面临加工挑战，例如蜡熔化过程中的热膨胀以去除蜡模导致壳开裂缺陷、从熔化蜡中释放碳氢化合物以及该过程中的燃烧残留物。为了克服这些挑战，有人提议用冰代替蜡作为图案材料。冰在从固体到液体的相变过程中具有减小体积的内在好处。它有助于减少由于膨胀引起的开裂。快速冷冻原型 (RFP)和冷冻铸造工艺 (FCP)可以产生冰纹。在快速的过程中冰熔模铸造 (RIIC)，在冰模中注入低温陶瓷浆料，制成用于金属铸造的陶瓷壳。升华用于在低于零条件下使用真空抽真空。估计各种属性，如总升华时间、浓度梯度和能量使用，对于过程表征和优化至关重要。已经提出并通过实验验证了基于扩散的数学模型来升华本研究中的冰模式。实验结果表明与理论模型密切相关（96.74%）。已经进行了冰熔模铸造的演示，并报告了接近的尺寸精度。