Determination Of The Effect Of Cooling Rate And Strontium Amount On Eutectic Si Modification Performance Of A356 Alloy Via Casting Simulation

It is well-known that strontium addition into molten metal as a eutectic modifier increases the elongation and toughness values of the cast parts by refining the eutectic phases. However, when over-modification occurs, porosity increases due to some unwanted physical and chemical reactions that develop within the structure. On the other hand, it has been seen that high cooling rates tend to reduce the porosity of the alloy, decrease grain size and secondary dendrite arm spacing and refine eutectic silicon phase on Al-Si casting alloys. Within the scope of this project, it is aimed to investigate the effects of the cooling rate of cast part and the addition amount of strontium on the silicon modification behavior of Al A356 (AlSi7Mg) alloy parts using casting simulation environment. In order to examine the effect of strontium addition, 150, 250, 350 and 450 parts per million of strontium additions were chosen based on thermodynamic calculations. After the casting session of each Al A356 composition with different strontium amount by using special designed 5-spoke mold on casting simulation, thermal analysis was done by obtained thermocouple data from casting part’s each spoke. Obtained thermal analysis data was interpreted with the casting simulation outputs. Within all aspects, the 150 parts per million strontium addition on Al A356 alloy has been identified as the most useful simulation model in terms of casting performance.

___

  • 1. Sigworth, G. K., Fundamentals Of Solidification In Aluminum Castings. 2014. International Jornal Of Metalcasting; 8: 7-20.
  • 2. Pramod, Ravikirana, A. K. Prasada Rao, Murty B. S., Bakshi S. R. 2016. Effect of Sc addition and T6 aging treatment on the microstructure modification and mechanical properties of A356 alloy, Mater Sci Eng A; 674:438–450.
  • 3. Lu, S Z., Hellawell 1987. A. The mechanism of silicon modification in aluminum-silicon alloys: Impurity induced twinning. Metall Mater Trans A; 18:1721–1733.
  • 4. Hanna, M.D., Lu, SZ. & Hellawell 1984. A. Modification in the aluminum silicon system. Metall Mater Trans A; 15, 459–469.
  • 5. Iwahori, H., Yonekura, K., Yamamoto, Y., Nakamura, M., 1990. Occuring Behaviour Of Porosity And Feeding Capabilities Of Sodium And Strontium Modified Al-Si Alloys. AFS Transactions; 98:167-173.
  • 6. Fang, Q. T., Granger, D. A. 1989. Porosity Formation In Modified And Unmodified A356 Alloy Castings. Transactions of the American Foundry Society; 97.10: 989-1000.
  • 7. Murty B. S., Kori S. A. & Chakraborty M. 2002. Grain refinement of aluminium and its alloys by heterogeneous nucleation and alloying. International Materials Reviews; 47:1, 3-29
  • 8. Sigworth G.K. and Guzowski M.M. 1985. Grain refining of Hypo-eutectic Al-Si Alloys. AFS Transactions; 93:907–12.
  • 9. Kori, S. A., Auradi, V. , Murty, B. S. ; Chakraborty, M. 2004. Poisoning and fading mechanism of grain refinement in Al-7Si alloy Proceedings of 3rd International Conference On Advanced Materials Processing (ICAMP-3); pp. 387-393.
  • 10. Zhang L.Y., Jiang A Y.H., Ma Z., Shan S.F., Jiab Y.Z., Fan C.Z., Wang W.K. 2008. Effect Of Cooling Rate On Solidified Microstructure and Mechanical Properties Of Aluminium-A356 Alloy. Journal Of Materials Processing Technology; 207:107–111
  • 11. James G. Conley, Julie Huang, Jo Asada, Kenji Akiba, 2000. Modeling The Effects Of Cooling Rate, Hydrogen Content, Grain Refiner And Modifier On Microporosity Formation In Al A356 Alloys. Materials Science And Engineering; 285:49–55.
  • 12. Tiryakioğlu, M., Campbell, J., Alexopoulos, N. D. 2009. On The Ductility Of Cast Al-7 Pct Si-Mg Alloys. Metallurgical And Materials Transactions A; 40(4):1000–1007.
  • 13. Eskin D, Du Q, Ruvalcaba D. 2005. Experimental Study Of Structure Formation In Binary Al−Cu Alloys At Different Cooling Rates. Materials Science And Engineering A; 404: 1−10.
  • 14. Liao H C, Sun Y, Sun G X. 2002. Correlation Between Mechanical Properties And Amount Of Dendritic Α-Al Phase In As-Cast Near-Eutectic Al-11.6%Si Alloys Modifies With Strontium. Material Science And Engineering A; 335:62−66.
  • 15. Ferdian, D., Lacaze, J., Lizarralde, I., Niklas, A., & Fernandez-Calvo, A. I. 2013. Study Of The Effect Of Cooling Rate On Eutectic Modification In A356 Aluminium Alloys. Materials Science Forum; 765:130–134.
  • 16. K. Nogita; H. Yasuda; K. Yoshida; K. Uesugi; A. Takeuchi; Y. Suzuki; A.K. Dahle 2006. Determination of strontium segregation in modified hypoeutectic Al–Si alloy by micro X-ray fluorescence analysis. Scripta materialia; 55(9), 787–790.
  • 17. Stuart D. McDonald; Kazuhiro Nogita; Arne K. Dahle 2006. Eutectic grain size and strontium concentration in hypoeutectic aluminium–silicon alloys. Journal of alloys and compounds; 422(1-2), 0–191.
  • 18. Sumanth Shankar; Yancy W Riddle; Makhlouf M Makhlouf 2004. Nucleation mechanism of the eutectic phases in aluminum–silicon hypoeutectic alloys. Acta Materialia 52.15; 4447–4460.
  • 19. Nogita, K., McDonald, S. D., & Dahle, A. K. 2004. Solidification mechanisms of unmodified and strontium-modified hypereutectic aluminium-silicon alloys. Philosophical Magazine; 84(17), 1683-1696.
  • 20. McDonald, S.D., Dahle, A.K., Taylor, J.A. et al. 2004. Eutectic grains in unmodified and strontium-modified hypoeutectic aluminum-silicon alloys. Metallurgical and materials transactions A;35(6), 1829-1837.