Effect of Travelling Magnetic Fields on the Dendritic Microstructure of AlSi and AlSiMn

Abstract

The microstructure formation of AlSi alloys is known to be sensitive to specific solidification conditions. In particular, small fractions of heavier alloying atoms can lead to the precipitation of intermetallic phases. Moreover, the mainly dendritic structure is also sensitive to fluid flow in the melt. These two factors and their mutual influence is examined in this paper. The solidification of AlSi7 and AlSi7Mn1 samples was studied while inducing fluid flow by a traveling magnetic field (TMF) of approximately 5 mT strength, traveling up or down the sample axis. All samples were molten and directionally solidified at constant solidification velocities between 0.03 and 0.24 mm/s. The application of two separate heaters allowed the fixation of constant temperature gradients in the solid and liquid parts of the samples, the use of a transparent silica aerogel crucible permitted optical verification of the solidification velocity. Cross sections were cut from the processed samples and the microstructure analyzed using light microscopy and SEM-EDX. From these images, values for the primary, secondary and tertiary dendrite arm spacing were retrieved. Results are presented which show a clear effect of the TMF-induced fluid flow on the binary samples, but almost none for the ternary alloy. Finally, an explanation proposing a process of precipitate particle pushing is given.