For the compromise of mechanical properties and product cost, the end-chilled sand casting technique was applied to studying the microstructure evolution of A356 Al alloy with cooling rate and the effect of different as-cast microstructures on the subsequent solution-treatment process. The experimental results show that the secondary dendrite arm spacing (SDAS) of primaryα(Al), the size of eutectic Si and the volume fraction of Al?Si eutectic are reduced with increasing the cooling rate. Eutectic Si, subjected to solution treatment at 540 °C for 1 h followed by water quenching to room temperature, is completely spheroidized at cooling rate of 2.6 K/s; is partially spheroidized atcooling rate of 0.6 K/s; and is only edge-rounded at cooling rates of 0.22 and 0.12 K /s. Whilst the microhardness is also the maximum at cooling rate of 2.6 K/s. It consequently suggests that subjected to modification by high cooling rate, the eutectic Si is more readily modified, thus shortening the necessary solution time at given solution temperature, i.e., reducing the product cost.
Departing from the volume-averaging method,an overall solidification kinetic model for undercooled single-phase solid-solution alloys was developed to study the effect of back diffusion on the solidification kinetics.Application to rapid solidification of undercooled Ni-15%Cu（mole fraction） alloy shows that back diffusion effect has significant influence on the solidification ending temperature but possesses almost no effect on the volume fraction solidified during recalescence.Inconsistent with the widely accepted viewpoint of Herlach,solidification ends at a temperature between the predictions of Lever rule and Scheil＇s equation,and the exact value is determined by the effect of back diffusion,the initial undercooling and the cooling rate.
Based on the statistical analysis of blocking effect arising from anisotropic growth,the anisotropic effect on the kinetics of solid-state transformation was investigated.The result shows that the blocking effect leads to the retardation of transformation and then a regular behavior of varying Avrami exponent.Following previous analytical model,the formulations of Avrami exponent and effective activation energy accounting for blocking effect were obtained.The anisotropic effect on the transformation depends on two factors,non-blocking factor γ and blocking scale k,which directly acts on the dimensionality of growth.The effective activation energy is not affected by the anisotropic effect.The evolution of anisotropic effect with the fraction transformed is taken into account,showing that the anisotropic effect is more severe at the middle stage of transformation.
