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Article history:
Received 26 July 2011
Received in revised form 2 December 2011
Accepted 3 December 2011
Available online 19 December 2011
Keywords:
Mechanical characterization
Aluminum alloys
Casting
a b s t r a c t
This paper presents an experimental investigation into the reduction of porosity and improvement of
mechanical properties of die cast engine blocks. The focus of this research was to seek improvement in
mechanical properties of aluminum die cast engine blocks by a reduction in the secondary dendrite arm
spacing, modication of the acicular Si microstructure in the eutectic phase and reduction of porosity.
Introducing additional cooling in the thick sections of the casting resulted in reduction of secondary
dendrite arm spacing and consequent improvement of mechanical properties. However the effect of
increased cooling faded with increasing distance from the core. 3D porosity measurements using CT Scan
showed signicant reduction in porosity in sections incorporating a cooling core. Eutectic modication
was achieved by modication with Sr. A target modication of 140 ppm led to signicant improvements
in elongation.
2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Aluminum alloys are a prime choice for the manufacture of
engine blocks because of their reduced weight leading to lesser
fuel consumption [13]. Different manufacturers are using various
casting processes for the manufacture of engine blocks. Some of the
most popular processes are die casting, precision sand casting and
lost foam casting. While die casting is very competitive for high volume production, porosity can affect mechanical properties unless
carefully controlled by optimizing the process parameters.
Aluminumsilicon alloys are widely used in automotive and
aerospace applications. They provide good uidity, strength and
ductility as well wear and corrosion resistance. Further improvement of mechanical properties is a high priority for the metal
casting industry. In the as cast state the microstructure of
AlSi alloys commonly displays a dendritic network, intermetallic
phases, Si particles as well as undesirable porosity and inclusions.
In addition there are grains and grain boundaries which are known
to affect the yield strength of most metals. However for the cast
metals, yield strength is not signicantly affected by grain size
reduction [4]. The improvement in mechanical properties can be
obtained primarily by reduction of dendrite arm spacing (DAS);
particularly secondary dendrite arm spacing (SDAS), reduction of
porosity and grain size and improvement of microstructure homogeneity of the nal product.
Thick-wall aluminum castings are often a viable alternative to
heavier iron castings in structural applications. Engine blocks are
among the most common automotive components to have been
converted from ferrous alloys to aluminum. Product design loading
requires these castings to provide acceptable mechanical properties in the thick sections. Die casting competes with Low Pressure,
Precision Sand and PRC/VRC in delivering these high integrity aluminum components at competitive prices. This paper presents an
experimental study to improve the mechanical properties of die
cast ADC 12 aluminum blocks. ADC 12 is a die cast alloy as per
Japan JIS5032 composition: Cu 1.53.5, Si 9.612.0, Mg 0.3 max, Zn
1.0 max, Fe 0.9 max, Mn 0.5 max, Sn 0.3 max, Al remainder. ADC
12 is primarily used for pressure die casting. It is similar to LM2 as
per BS 1490, Aluminum Association 384.0, ISO AlSi10 Cu2 Fe, and AC
46100 as per EN 1706. The engine blocks were heat treated to T5.
Production constraints limited the variables in the study to thermal control, heat treatment and alloy modication. The quality
improvements were documented with detailed mechanical property evaluation including tensile, yield, elongation and 3D porosity
measurements.
M.A. Irfan et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 535 (2012) 108114
(1)
where is the secondary dendrite arm spacing, ts is the local solidication time and a is a material constant. The values of a were
shown to be 15.5 for a Al5 wt.% Si and 11.5 for Al9 wt.% Si. Using
the above mathematical model on the variation of DAS with solidication time for the Al9 wt.% Si casting, it can be estimated that
solidication times of 6 s and 2 s correspond to DAS of 30 and 18 m
respectively. This relatively simple formulation enables the calculation of neness of microstructure directly from solidication times.
They further illustrated that heat ux from the casting to the chill
depends on the initial temperature of the chill and the thermal
diffusivities of the cast and chill material.
Zhang et al. [6,7] demonstrated a faster cooling technology using
a copper mold cooled by a phase transition medium (Sn) for solidication of cast aluminum 356 alloy. They demonstrated that DAS is
mainly affected by cooling rate. A higher cooling rate and a shorter
solidication time leads to a more rened microstructure. Their
experiments measured a DAS of 18 m at a cooling rate of 100 K/s
and a very ne DAS of 8 m at a cooling rate of 650 K/s. They further
elaborated that the coarser eutectic brous Si phase that surrounds
the -Al greatly deteriorates the ultimate strength and elongation
of the alloy. However with faster cooling rates the microstructure
obtained is more rened leading to improved UTS.
1.2. Factors affecting solidication rate
Solidication rate during casting depends on the rate of heat
dissipation. A number of factors inuence heat transfer during
solidication, which include (1) thermal diffusivity of the liquid
metal, (2) thermal diffusivity of the solidied metal, (3) the moldmetal interface heat transfer coefcient, (4) thermal conductivity
& diffusivity of the mold material (depends on the efciency of
externally cooled mold), and (5) convection and radiation of the
mold material to the atmosphere [8]. Although all of the above
listed factors contribute towards the rate of solidication, it is the
mold-metal interface that has the dominant thermal resistance.
By using equations of heat transfer the solidication time can
be modeled as [8]
t=
L
.
h(Tf To )
V
A
(2)
109
110
M.A. Irfan et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 535 (2012) 108114
Fig. 1. Front (a) and bottom (b) views of a die cast engine block.
Fig. 2. (a) Location of tensile sample taken from the saddle. (b) A broken tensile sample.
Table 1
Mechanical properties of V6 engine blocks.
Ave
Max
Min
SD
TS (MPa)
YS (MPa)
% Elong.
200
246
146
20
158
187
145
9
0.80
1.03
0.38
0.18
Fig. 3. Variation of ultimate tensile strength with the percentage pore area.
M.A. Irfan et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 535 (2012) 108114
111
Fig. 5. Comparison of SDAS reported for various casting processes (Irfan [13], Oswalt and Misra [12], Radhakrishna et al. [14], Zhang et al. [6]).
112
M.A. Irfan et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 535 (2012) 108114
Fig. 6. (a) SEM micrograph of ADC 12 die cast microstructure. (b) -Phase iron plates.
Table 4 shows the comparison of mechanical properties of I4 engine blocks with and without Sr addition. The base line for
comparison is the previous data [13] from Design of Experiments
is summarized in the bottom row. It might be noted that the target
modication of 140 ppm could not be achieved and the resultant
Sr in the melt was about 100 ppm. The improvement in UTS and
elongation was not substantial in this case.
Next modication was attempted on V-6 engine blocks. The
same mixing technique was carried out. However the metal ow
from the launder was blocked in this case to achieve controlled
modication. Ten pounds of master alloy was added to 7000 lbs
of holding furnace. Alu-Delta readings conrmed successful
M.A. Irfan et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 535 (2012) 108114
Table 2
Mechanical properties of I-4 engine blocks with and without a cooling core.
Table 3
Volumetric porosity data.
ID-06
Tensile (MPa)
Yield (MPa)
% Elong.
J1-F
J1-R
J2-F
J2-R
J4-F
J4-R
J5-F
J5-R
Ave.
190
186
285
212
115**
195
257
218
220
269*
0.7
0.0
0.5
0.6
0.5
0.5
0.47
Tensile (MPa)
Yield (MPa)
% Elong.
J1-F
J1-R
J2-F
J2-R
J4-F
J4-R
J5-F
J5-R
Ave.
230
276
247
266
207
227
272
252
247
207
241
215
209
220
210
217
0.5
1.7
BOGM
1.2
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.77
*
**
113
Only piece with good yield, all others broke prior to 0.2% offset.
115 MPa, an outlier, not included in nding the average.
39,358
482
1.21
Table 4
Summary of mechanical properties with and without modication of I-4 blocks.
Specimen ID
Modication
(Target 0.014%)
UTS (MPa)
YS (MPa)
% Elong.
Block # 08
Block # 26
Previous DOE data:
average from 4
engine blocks
w/o Sr
w/ Sr (0.0101%)
Nil
259
270
268
187
214
218
1.5
1.75
1.22
Table 5
Summary of mechanical properties with and without modication of V-6 blocks.
Specimen ID
Modication
(Target 0.014%)
UTS (MPa)
YS (MPa)
% Elong.
Block # 30
Block # 35
Previous data: Table 1
w/o Sr
w/ Sr (0.0155%)
w/o Sr
219
224
200
180
163
158
0.5
1.5
0.8
Fig. 10. A comparison of SDAS and UTS obtained with different engine blocks.
The water cooled core reduces SDAS and porosity thus improving mechanical properties. However the cooling effect diminishes
with increasing distance from the core. Higher cooling rates and
deeper penetration can be achieved by using cores made of higher
thermal conductivity alloys and/or higher cooling water ow rates.
SDAS can effectively be used as a predictor of mechanical properties. Percent Area Porosity (2D) is not a reliable predictor of
mechanical properties due to the probabilistic and random nature
of porosity at the section under observation. For a better correlation with mechanical properties (which are volumetric in
nature) it is recommended to measure volumetric porosity (3D)
instead.
Addition of Sr is effective in die casting for modifying the acicular Si needles into a brous structure. Addition of 0.0155% Sr
(target 0.014%) showed an improvement in elongation from 0.5% to
1.5%. Among the two possible directions for mechanical property
improvements, i.e. vent core cooling and Sr addition, the former is
Fig. 11. (a) Microstructure of ADC-12 without the modication. (b) Microstructure of ADC-12 with Sr renement.
114
M.A. Irfan et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 535 (2012) 108114
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