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Article history:
Received 6 December 2012
Accepted 27 February 2013
Available online 14 March 2013
Keywords:
Aluminium alloys
Microstructure
Shear stress
Thermal analysis
Solidication
a b s t r a c t
In this study, the effect of cooling rate on the microstructure, solidication parameters, and mechanical
property of LM13 alloy has been investigated. To obtain different cooling rates, an air-cooled graphite
mold, 3 sand molds with different moisture content, a water-cooled graphite mold, and a water-cooled
steel mold were used. The cooling rates and the solidication parameters were determined by using computer-aided thermal analysis method. Results show that with increasing cooling rate from 1.1 to 50 C/s,
secondary dendrite arm spacing decreases 65%. At higher cooling rates, the nucleation temperature of
reactions shifts to higher temperature, except the nal reaction, but the eutectic recalescence undercooling is eliminated. It modies eutectic microstructure and decreases parallel eutectic layers distance
from 23.24 to 4 lm. In addition, it reduced primary silicon particle appearance (PSPA) from 1.17 to
0.3. The equivalent porosity diameter also reduces from 72.5 lm to 27.8 lm. Shear punch test (SPT)
shows improvement of ultimate shear stress, yield shear stress, and normalized displacement at higher
cooling rates. Hardness has also been improved about 30 Vickers as a result of increasing cooling rate.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Al-Si alloys have been developed due to their good castability
properties like excellent uidity and easy feed-ability, suitable specic mechanical properties and formability, and high corrosion
resistance. Among these alloys, eutectic and hypereutectic alloys
are really attractive for their wear resistance properties and low
thermal expansion. They are converted to the ideal alloys to manufacture the automobile parts because of the high wear resistance
properties of these alloys. Also the addition of Ni causes the formation of high temperature stable intermetallic compounds to
enhance elevated temperature [14]. These properties lead to the
application of LM13 which is one of AlSi eutectic alloys as a
decent material for automobile pistons [5].
Cooling rate is one of the most important variables which
affects microstructure and mechanical properties of cast alloys
[6]. High cooling rate decreases grain size, shrinkage porosity,
and causes more uniform distribution of porosity. Also, it modies
primary and eutectic silicon and decreases the size of them. Segregation between dendrites and grain boundaries decreases with
increasing cooling rate. Therefore, the amount of insoluble
elements is reduced [1,79]. Hajjari and Divandari [10] have also
Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +98 21 77240371.
E-mail address: Shabestari@iust.ac.ir (S.G. Shabestari).
0261-3069/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2013.02.088
Table 2
Cooling rates for different cooling conditions.
No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
a
2. Experimental procedures
1.1
2.1
3.1
4.2
5.6
50b
Cu
Ni
Mg
Fe
Mn
Al
11.20
0.93
0.91
0.97
0.1
0.02
Balanced
and
thermocouple
position,
tsteel
mold
= 0.9 mm,
Fig. 2. (a) Cooling curve and solidication parameters for LM13 alloy. (b) Cooling curves at different cooling conditions.
Table 3
Reactions detected from thermal analysis curves [23].
No.
Reactions
2
3
4
5
6
arrest the latent heat released from the phase formation at high
cooling rates. Consequently, it can be concluded that cooling curve
thermal analysis is not an accurate method for high cooling rates.
Therefore, to estimate the cooling rate in this condition, SDAS vs.
CR equation is established which will be discussed later.
Table 4 illustrates the effect of the cooling rate on solidication
parameters. It is shown that increasing cooling rate increases
nucleation temperature. Shabestari and Malekan reported the similar result for 319 alloy [7]. The same results have also been reported for a magnesium alloy [24] and AC AlSi7Cu2 alloy [25];
while Backerud et al. reported a conicting result [23]. A few
researchers have discussed about the cause of this phenomenon
[7,25]. While the cooling rate increases, more nuclei particles are
created on the wall of the mold. These particles are transferred into
the bulk of the melt because of the convection. At high temperature gradient, the convection is enhanced and more solidied particles are distributed in the melt. It is also reported [26] that the
clustering of silicon atoms occurs at a higher temperature before
the nucleation of the primary silicon particles starts. When the
cooling rates and as a result undercooling increase, critical nuclei
size decreases which changes embryos to nuclei.
Table 4
Solidication parameters.
CR (C/
s)
TNucleation
(C)
TEutectic
(C)
TReaction1
(C)
TReaction2
(C)
TReaction3
(C)
Solidication range
(C)
Recalescence undercooling
(C)
Solidication time
(s)
1.1
2.1
3.1
4.2
5.6
575.1
576.2
582.3
586
588
570.7
570.5
570.7
571.6
572.3
536.4
535.9
537.2
541
NA
519.5
520
521
522
NA
512.3
511.2
515
511
NA
76
73
82
93
101
3.9
4.3
4.2
0.2
0
380
395
346
243
99
10
SDAS aCRb
Fig. 3. Primary silicon particles act as the eutectic nucleation sites.
b = 0.30.5
Eq. (2) is obtained by tting a power curve to the results of this
study.
SDAS 50:7CR0:26
In Eq. (2), b is not in the same range which has been reported by
Flemings. This difference is possibly because of the different methods of calculation of cooling rate. As LM13 has a narrow mushy
zone, calculation of the cooling rate in this area is impractical.
Therefore, the slope of the cooling curve above the liquidus (linear
Fig. 4. Microstructure of the primary and eutectic silicon particles at different cooling rates.
11
Fig. 5. Intermetallic formation on the eutectic silicon (a) optical microscope (b) SEM micrograph.
Table 5
Shape features of primary silicon particles.
PSPA a da =L Ra
CR
Number (1/ Aspect
(C/s) mm2)
ratio
Diameter
(lm)
Roundness Area
Distance
fraction (%) (lm)
1.1
2.1
3.1
4.2
5.6
50
44.9
35.6
31.5
29.3
24.5
11.3
0.63
0.65
0.74
0.76
0.8
0.82
12
14
20
21
47
98
2.8
1.7
1.4
1.3
1.4
1.1
1.5
1.1
1.3
1.2
0.74
0.74
171
120
109
103
106
50
consequently, the slip of dislocation decreases. Thus, the probability of separation and cracking of second phases increases [28]. In
other word, thinner and longer primary silicon particles may act
as cracks due to the incoherent bond of their interfaces with aAl. Through the initial stages of primary silicon particles growth,
their morphology remains spherical. But it changes to octahedral
when the diameter becomes more than 15 lm [30]. According to
the simulation done by Peng and Fu-guo [31], the edges of harder
particles in a soft matrix act as stress concentrators and fracture
occurs from those sites. In the range of cooling rates between
3.1 C/s and 50 C/s, aspect ratio does not change signicantly,
while roundness increases continuously and plays an important
role to reduce the deteriorating effects of silicon particles.
Another important factor in the PSPA equation is the equivalent
diameter shown in Table 5 and show that da decreases with
increasing the cooling rate. While the cooling rate increases, the
number of silicon particles increases, because the nucleation rate
increases. Furthermore, diffusion decreases and fewer atoms attach to nuclei. Consequently, da decreases due to lack of diffusion
and higher amount of silicon particles.
Next parameter that affects the PSPA is the distance from a silicon particle to its nearest silicon particle (Table 5). When the cooling rate increases, the number of silicon particles per square
millimeter increases and consequently the average distance to
the nearest silicon particle should decrease.
The variation of PSPA with cooling rate is presented in Fig. 7.
PSPA at high cooling rates is less than that of low cooling rates.
Thus, increasing the cooling rate causes the better distribution of
primary silicon particles. According to Boostanis research [28],
improvement of morphological features of harder particles in a
ductile matrix enhances mechanical properties.
3.2.3. Eutectic microstructure
Fig. 8 shows eutectic layers space variation with cooling rate.
Increasing cooling rate has a signicant effect on the eutectic
12
kA A=N0:5
kA lm 50:4CR0:47
R = 0.94
kll lm 24:45CR0:48
R2 = 0.93
Some researchers [3335] have offered power relations between eutectic layers spacing and growth rate and temperature
gradient. Power of the growth rate (V) and temperature gradient
(G) have been reported 0.5 and 0.33, respectively [33]. These results show a good agreement with the results of this work considering the fact that V G = CR.
Fig. 8. Effect of the cooling rate on the eutectic silicon particles distance.
3.2.4. Porosity
The content of shrinkage porosity between the secondary dendrite arms depends on how these zones are fed. Additionally, the
hydrogen atoms content in the melt and their release through
solidication are important factors for formation of gas porosity.
If the melt is able to run in the interdendritic regions, the size
and content of porosity decrease. In addition, at high cooling rate,
there is not enough time for hydrogen atoms to escape from the
solid lattice and become molecular. Since the formation of these
13
Fig. 10. Effect of the cooling rate on the porosity diameter and area percentage.
Fig. 11. Shear stress vs. normalized displacement for LM13 alloy.
s F=pt Davr
Davr D0 D1 =2
Fig. 12. (a) Ultimate shear stress, yield shear stress, and normalized displacement at USS point vs. cooling rate. (b) Vickers micro-hardness vs. cooling rate by 100 g force.
14
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