Abstract The directional solidification technique allows the study of growth of the solid phase, as-cast structure and, finally, its mechanical characteristics as a consequence of thermal parameters. On the other hand, in the last decade, a process called equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) has emerged as a widely-known technique in fabrication of ultrafine-grained metals and alloys. Applicability of the ECAP technique affords an excellent potential for changing, in a controlled and beneficial manner, the resulting properties of metals and alloys. For this paper, an experimental research has been conducted to study the effects of solidification parameter (cooling rate) on resulting microhardness in hypoeutectic Al-Si alloys, upon use of an ECAP procedure. The influence of cooling on the scale of the dendritic patterns is presented and discussed with recourse to equations. The resulting microhardness variation with position throughout the as-cast materials and cooling rate were characterized by experimental power laws. Results determined after the solidification experiments have revealed microhardness as a function of both cooling rate and position (P) of the as-cast materials to be dependent on alloy composition. In the ECAP process via route C with three passes, “as-solidified” microstructures have been found to be distorted and fragmented during the severe plastic deformation. This deformation imposed on the billets during the ECAP process facilitated obtaining a fine microstructure and high levels of microhardness were observed. However, even with the ECAP process, it was shown that microhardness is strongly dependent of the cooling rates.

Mechanical properties and performance of metallic materials depend on their microstructures. In order to develop engineering materials that match prescribed criteria and to enable design with multifunctional materials, it is essential to be able to predict their microstructural patterns, such as size, shape, and spacing of the dendritic structures observed in solidified metals. In the cases of metallic alloys, which present dendritic structure, the mechanical properties of foundry products depend mainly on the primary- and secondary-arm. Therefore, it is important, in a computational simulation of the solidification processes, to use reliable methods to correlate the thermal parameters with secondary-dendrite arm spacing. This study presents a numerical model for prediction of secondary-arm spacing as a function of thermal parameters (cooling rates and local solidification time). Spacing of the arms for a binary alloy is numerically predicted using a phase-field model. Secondary dendrites calculated by phase-field model, they are similar to the ones found in experiments investigation of solidification in Al-Cu alloys. Arm spacing predicted in the present work, when compared with the experimental results, showed good agreement. Its estimation takes place at the late stage of growth. The effect of physical properties (partition coefficient (ke), diffusion in the liquid (DL) and diffusion in the solid phase (DS)) on secondary-arm spacing is systematically investigated by phase-field model. With the help of numerical results for Al-4.5wt%Cu alloy, the applicability of the phase-field model to the estimation of secondary-dendrite arm spacing during unidirectional solidification is demonstrated.

In this paper, we present a phase-field model with a grid based on the Finite-Difference Method, for improvement of computational efficiency and reducing the memory size requirement. The numerical technique, which is based on the temperature change of the pure material, enables us to use, in the initial steps of the computation, a very small computational domain. Subsequently, in the course of the simulation of the solidification process, the computation domain expands around the dendrite. The computation showed that the dendrite with well-developed secondary arms can be obtained with low computation time and moderate memory demand. The computational efficiency of this numerical technique, the microstructural evolution during the solidification, and competitive growth between side-branches are discussed.

A phase-field model is proposed for the simulation of microstructure and solute concentration during the solidification process of Fe-C-P ternary alloys. A relation between material properties and model parameters is presented. Two-dimensional computation results exhibit dendrites in Fe-C-P alloys for different phosphorus concentrations. Alterations in the phosphorus concentration appear to affect the advance speed of the solid-liquid interface. Such an alteration is due to the small diffusivity of phosphorus during the solidification process.