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The distinctions of dendritic morphology and sidebranching behavior when solidified under atmosphere pressure, constant pressure which is higher than atmosphere pressure (hereinafter referred to as constant pressure) and periodic pressure were investigated using 3-D phase field method. When growing at atmosphere pressure, side branches (secondary dendritic arms) are irregular. When solidified under constant pressure with a relatively high value, side branches are much more luxuriant, with more developed high-order side branches. When applied with periodic pressure, resonant sidebranching happens, leading to many more regular side branches and the smallest secondary dendritic arm spacing (SDAS) in the three cases. The significant difference in dendritic morphology is associated with tip velocity modulated by total undercooling including pressure and temperature undercooling. In the case of constant pressure, tip velocity increases linearly with total undercooling, and it varies periodically in periodic pressure case. The different variation trend in tip velocity is the reason for the distinct dendrite growth behavior in different cases. Unlike the phenomenon in constant pressure case where the dendrite grows faster with higher pressure, the dendrite grows slower under periodic pressure with higher amplitude, resulting in less developed primary dendrite and side branches. This is influenced by tip remelting due to low undercooling or even negative undercooling. It is revealed that the accelerated velocity of tip remelting increases with the decline of undercooling. The greater the amplitude of periodic pressure, the faster the tip remelting velocity during one period. This is the reason why the average tip velocity decreases with the rise of amplitude of periodic pressure.

The influence of periodic pressure with low and high frequencies on microstructure and dendritic sidebranching was studied by using 3-D phase field method. In both low and high frequency cases, the variation trend of SDAS (secondary dendritic arm spacing) with increasing pressure frequency is opposite to that of sidebranching frequency, while the variation trend of the average length of secondary arms is consistent with that of sidebranching frequency. The high sidebranching frequency indicates that more secondary arms share the whole driving force of dendrite growth, resulting in lower driving force for each one and leading to less developed secondary arms. The smallest SDAS is obtained when perturbed by the periodic pressure with the frequency of 0.157/τ0 (τ0 is the physical unit of time in the dimensionless phase field model) and 2.200/τ0 in low and high frequency cases, respectively. Comparisons of dendritic morphology and secondary arms are made between the low and high frequency cases. Firstly, in the low frequency case, secondary arms are luxuriant especially when pressure frequency is low, with many high-order side branches stretching out. Secondly, the average length of secondary arms in primary dendrite is longer in the low frequency case than that without pressure, and much longer than that in the high frequency case. Thirdly, the dendrite tip without side branches in the high frequency case is much longer than that in the low frequency case. All of the differences in dendritic morphology and sidebranching in the two cases can be attributed to the different modulation mechanism. In the low frequency case, periodic pressure determines tip velocity and then modulates sidebranching directly. While in the high frequency case, periodic pressure cannot determine sidebranching directly, but via modulating tiny protuberances in dendrite tip, part of which evolves into side branch. In this case, the tiny protuberances take part of the whole driving force, leading to less developed secondary arms.

High pressure die casting copper is used to produce rotors for induction motors to improve efficiency. Experiments were carried out for a special “step-shape” casting with different step thicknesses. Based on the measured temperature inside the die, the interfacial heat transfer coefficient (IHTC) at the metal/die interface during vacuum die casting was evaluated by solving the inverse problem. The IHTC peak value was 4.5×103- 11×103 W·m-2·K-1 under the basic operation condition. The influences of casting pressure, fast shot speed, pouring temperature and initial die surface temperature on the IHTC peak values were investigated. Results show that a greater casting pressure and faster shot speed could only increase the IHTC peak values at the location close to the ingate. An increase of pouring temperature and/or initial die surface temperature significantly increases the IHTC peak values.

Pure copper tensile bars were produced by conventional die casting (HPDC) and vacuum-assist die casting (VADC) processes. Porosity and mechanical properties were investigated by using optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray computed tomography (XCT) and tensile tester. Results show that porosities including gas porosity and shrinkage porosity could be observed in copper castings. Since the application of vacuum could reduce filling related gas entrapment and facilitate solidification due to the increased heat transfer between metal and die, both number and size of the entrapped gases, as well as shrinkage porosities were significantly reduced in vacuum-assist die castings of pure copper. The porosity fraction decreased from 2.243% to 0.875% compared with that of the conventional die casting. Besides, mechanical properties were improved significantly, i.e., by 15% for ultimate tensile strength and three times for elongation.

During the cold-chamber high pressure die casting (HPDC) process, samples were produced to investigate the microstructure characteristics of AM60B magnesium alloy. Special attention was paid to the effects of process parameters on the morphology and distribution of externally solidified crystals (ESCs) in the microstructure of magnesium alloy die castings, such as slow shot phase plunger velocity, delay time of pouring and fast shot phase plunger velocity. On the basis of metallographic observation and quantitative statistics, it is concluded that a lower slow shot phase plunger velocity and a longer delay time of pouring both lead to an increment of the size and percentage of the ESCs, due to the fact that a longer holding time of the melt in the shot sleeve will cause a more severe loss of the superheat. The impingement of the melt flow on the ESCs is more intensive with a higher fast shot phase plunger velocity, in such case the ESCs reveal a more granular and roundish morphology and are dispersed throughout the cross section of the castings. Based on analysis of the filling and solidification processes of the melt during the HPDC process, reasonable explanations were proposed in terms of the nucleation, growth, remelting and fragmentation of the ESCs to interpret the effects of process parameters on the morphology and distribution of the ESCs in the microstructure of magnesium alloy die castings.

It has been well known that electric pulse can be utilized to enhance the plasticity of metals, which is attributed to the change of dislocation dynamics, e.g., localized planar slip to homogeneous wavy slip. Here, we show another effect of pulse current, which facilitates texture weakening through room-temperature dynamic recrystallization and additionally improve the plasticity of a polycrystalline Mg-3Al-1Sn-1Zn alloy. By conducting a tensile test under electrical pulse, we found that the peak flow stress and fracture strain depend strongly on current density. As peak current densities increases, the flow stress drops and the fracture strain increases. Our Electron Backscatter Diffraction results suggest that dynamic recrystallization occurs at room temperature, which develops a weakened texture. Our work provides a new insight into electroplasticity mechanism in Mg alloys.

Fluid flow has a significant impact on the microstructure evolution of alloys during solidification. Based on the previous work relating simulation of the dendritic growth of magnesium alloys with hcp (hexagonal close-packed) structure, an extension was made to the formerly established CA (cellular automaton) model with the purpose of studying the effect of fluid flow on the dendritic growth of magnesium alloys. The modified projection method was used to solve the transport equations of flow field. By coupling the flow field with the solute field, simulation results of equiaxed and columnar dendritic growth of magnesium alloys with fluid flow were achieved. The simulated results were quantitatively compared with those without fluid flow. Moreover, a comparison was also made between the present work and previous works conducted by others. It can be concluded that a deep understanding of the dendritic growth of magnesium alloys with fluid flow can be obtained by applying the present numerical model.

In the present study, the influence of natural convection on the lamellar eutectic growth is determined by a phase-field-lattice Boltzmann study for Al-Cu eutectic alloy. The mass difference resulting from concentration difference led to the fluid flow, and a robust parallel and adaptive mesh refinement algorithm was employed to improve the computational efficiency without any compromising accuracy. Results show that the existence of natural convection would affect the growth undercooling and thus control the interface shape by adjusting the lamellar width. In particular, by alternating the magnitude of the solute expansion coefficient, the strength of the natural convection is changed. Corresponding microstructure patterns are discussed and compared with those under no-convection conditions.

Microstructural and hardness evolutions of a vacuum-assistant die-cast A380 (Al-8.67wt.%Si-3.27wt.%Cu) alloy during heat treatment were investigated. Isothermal DSC test at 200 °C revealed that the precipitation reaction in the surface layer was faster than that in the central region. This corresponded with the hardness evolution that the surface layer hardened faster. The hardness increment in the surface layer was higher than that in the central region. Further experimental evidences indicated that the differences were due to the different amounts of heterogeneous nucleation sites for precipitation in the two parts. The influence of the characteristic as-cast microstructure on the artificial aging process is analyzed and discussed in detail.

The microstructure and mechanical properties of a Mg-6Al-1Zn-0.9Sn alloy processed by equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) at temperatures of 250 °C and 300 °C were investigated. It was found that the refinement of the microstructure was very dependent on the processing temperature. The main reason for the difference in grain refinement was the precipitation of secondary-phase particles. Texture information obtained by electron back-scatter diffraction (EBSD) showed the gradual formation of a 45° texture during the ECAP process, while the maximum intensity was different for processing temperatures at 250 °C and 300 °C. By calculating the contribution from different strengthening mechanisms, it was found that a 45° texture had a huge influence on grain boundary strengthening and thus the yield strength.

To predict the heat transfer behavior of A380 alloy in a shot sleeve, a numerical approach (inverse method) is used and validated by high pressure die casting (HPDC) experiment under non-shooting condition. The maximum difference between the measured and calculated temperature profiles is smaller than 3 ℃, which suggests that the inverse method can be used to predict the heat transfer behavior of alloys in a shot sleeve. Furthermore, the results indicate an increase in maximum interfacial heat flux density (qmax) and heat transfer coefficient (hmax) with an increase in sleeve filling ratio, especially at the pouring zone (S2 zone). In addition, the values of initial temperature (TIDS) and maximum shot sleeve surface temperature (Tsimax) at the two end zones (S2 and S10) are higher than those at the middle zone (S5). Moreover, in comparison with fluctuations in heat transfer coefficient (h) with time at the two end zones (S2 and S10), 2.4-6.5 kW·m-2·K-1, 3.5-12.5 kW·m-2·K-1, respectively, more fluctuations are found at S5 zone, 2.1-14.7 kW·m-2·K-1. These differences could theoretically explain the formation of the three zones: smooth pouring zone, un-smooth middle zone and smooth zone, with different morphologies in the metal log under the non-shot casting condition. Finally, our calculations also reveal that the values of qmax and hmax cast at 680 ℃ are smaller than those cast at 660 ℃ and at 700 ℃.

In this work, the tensile deformation behavior of an as-extruded AZ80 magnesium alloy under pulsed current (PC) was investigated based on microstructure observations. We found that compared with the tensile tests at room temperature (RT) and given temperature (GT), the flow stress is reduced due to both thermal and athermal effects of pulsed current. A quasi-in-situ electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis reveals that at the same strain, the geometrically necessary dislocation (GND) density of the RT sample is the highest, followed by the GT sample and the PC sample. This proves that the athermal effect can promote the annihilation of dislocations and slow down dislocation pileup, which reduces the flow stress. In addition, the twinning behavior under different deformation conditions was studied; the twins are {10−12} tension twins, which are activated with the assistance of local stress. We found that the twin fraction in the PC sample is lower than that in the RT and GT samples, due to the least accumulation of GNDs at grain boundaries, which decreases the nucleation of {10−12} tension twins.

A 3D mathematical model was proposed to simulate the mold filling process in high-pressure die casting (HPDC) to improve accuracy considering the surface tension. Piecewise liner interface calculation (PLIC) and volume of fluid (VOF) methods were used to construct the pattern of the liquid interface. A coupled level-set and VOF method (CLSVOF) was proposed to capture the interface pattern and obtain its normal vector. A continuum surface force (CSF) model was used to consider the surface tension. Two water analogy experiments were carried out using the proposed model. Simulation and experimental results were analyzed and compared; and the effects of surface tension were also discussed. The simulation results agreed well with the experiments and the simulation accuracy was an improvement on interface geometries, liquid flows, and gas entrapments.