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Metastable liquid properties and rapid crystal growth of Ti-Ni-Al alloy investigated by electrostatic levitation and molecular dynamics simulation

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Abstract

Electrostatic levitation technique and molecular dynamics simulation were performed to investigate the thermophysical properties, liquid structure and crystal growth dependence on undercooling of Ti85Ni10Al5 alloy. The liquid Ti85Ni10Al5 alloy was substantially undercooled up to 335 K (0.18TL). As undercooling increased, the potential energy of the liquid alloy decreased and the alloy entered into a high metastable state. At this state, the atoms tended to bond with each other and the clusters were inclined to convert into high-coordinated clusters, as confirmed by the fraction of the high-coordinated clusters variation. The enlarged clusters and enhanced local structure stability contributed to the increase of the thermophysical parameters and crystal growth velocity, and eventually dendrite refinement. The density, the specific heat and the surface tension of liquid alloy exhibited a linear relation with temperature and the shear viscosity of liquid alloy showed exponential variation which showed good agreement with the calculation results by molecular dynamics simulation. The growth velocity first increased slowly and then dramatically once the undercooling exceeded the threshold. The achieved maximum crystal growth velocity was 12.4 ms−1 and it was up to 326 times of the value at 94 K undercooling.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MOE Key Laboratory of Materials Physics and Chemistry under Extraordinary Conditions, School of Physical Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China

    RuiLin Xiao, Ying Ruan, MaoJie Lin, Liang Hu & BingBo Wei

  2. Key Laboratory for Liquid-Solid Structural Evolution and Processing of Materials, Ministry of Education, Shandong University, Jinan, 250061, China

    JingYu Qin & Hui Li

Authors
  1. RuiLin Xiao
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  2. Ying Ruan
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  3. MaoJie Lin
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  4. JingYu Qin
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  5. Hui Li
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  6. Liang Hu
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  7. BingBo Wei
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Correspondence to Ying Ruan.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U1806219, 52073232, 52088101 and U1660108), the Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of Shaanxi Province (Grant No. 2020JC-11), and the Science Fund for Scientific and Technological Innovation Team of Shaanxi Province (Grant No. 2021TD-14). The authors are grateful to Dr. Delu Geng, Mr. Chenhui Zheng, Mr. Jiongfei Zhao and Ms. Tingting Xu for their helpful discussion.

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Xiao, R., Ruan, Y., Lin, M. et al. Metastable liquid properties and rapid crystal growth of Ti-Ni-Al alloy investigated by electrostatic levitation and molecular dynamics simulation. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 64, 2200–2210 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-021-1859-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-021-1859-1

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