Thermal description of hypoeutectic Al-Si-Cu alloys using silicon equivalency

The modeling of casting processes has remained a topic of active interest for several decades, and availability of numerous software packages on the market is a good indication of the interest that the casting industry has in this field. Most of the data used in these software packages are read or estimated from the binary or multi-component phase diagrams. Unfortunately, except for binary diagrams, many of ternary or higher order phase diagrams are still not accurate enough. Having in mind that most of the aluminum binary systems are very well established, it has been tried to transfer a multi-component system into one well known Al-Xi pseudo binary system (in this case the Al-Si phase diagram was chosen as a reference system). The new Silicon Equivalency (SiEQ) algorithm expresses the amounts of major and minor alloying elements in the aluminum melts through an 'equivalent' amount of silicon. Such a system could be used to calculate several thermo-physical and solidification characteristics of multi component as cast aluminum alloys. This lends the model the ability to make predictions of solidification characteristics of cast parts, where cooling rates are slow and the solidification process has to be known in great detail in order to avoid problems in the casting. This work demonstrates how the SiEQ algorithm can be used to calculate characteristic solidification temperatures of the multi-component hypoeutectic Al-Si-Cu alloys as well as their latent heats. SA statistical analysis of the results obtained for a wide range of alloy chemical compositions shows a very good correlation with the experimental data and the SiEQ calculations.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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