Abstract
An aluminum alloy was cast by a laboratory scale horizontal twin roll caster with or without melt conditioning by the intensive shearing prior to solidification and then examined by high-resolution electron microscopy. The combined twin roll casting process with solidification formed channels and induced centerline segregation without the conditioning. In comparison, the melt conditioning minimized the severe segregation on the surface as well as at the centerline. Furthermore, large amounts of solute elements were uniformly distributed along grain boundaries or interdendritic regions. Analytical electron microscopy detected a fine oxide particle or a fragmented aluminum particle particularly at the center region of one nucleated aluminum grain. In addition, large oxide particles of about 1 to 5 μm nucleated aluminum grains easily due to low undercooling necessary for the heterogeneous nucleation, whereas small oxides with the size of about 100 to 200 nm requiring large undercooling were pushed along the grain boundaries instead of contributing to the nucleation. The enhanced nucleation of aluminum grains and well-distributed solute atoms in the melt by the melt conditioning resulted in the minimization of macro- and micro-segregations and the formation of a uniform microstructure.
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Acknowledgments
The author thanks Dr. W. D. Griffiths and Prof. N. R. Green of University of Birmingham for financial support under EPSRC Grant EP/H026177/1, Prof. Z. Fan of Brunel University, Dr. S. Kumar of Oxford University, and Mr. A. Powell of University of Birmingham for supplying the material for investigation, Mr. R. Hibberson and Mr. A. Scarratt of Struers Ltd., for the metallographic sample preparation, particularly Prof. Jian-Feng Nie and his review committee for the constructive comments.
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Kim, K. The Effect of Melt Conditioning on Segregation of Solute Elements and Nucleation of Aluminum Grains in a Twin Roll Cast Aluminum Alloy. Metall Mater Trans A 45, 4538–4548 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11661-014-2414-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11661-014-2414-y