GEOMETRIC MODELING IN THE STUDY OF STRUCTURING DURING THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF METALS AND ALLOYS.

Background. There is the necessity to develop the method of metals and alloys crystallization modeling, which will reflect the geometric regularities of the formation and development of a crystal, as the existing numerical techniques are time and labour consuming. Materials and/or methods. During the crystallization of pure metal, liquid-phase sintering of hard alloys and alloys with formation of one solid phase it is possible to construct the model of crystallization process on the microlevel, when in the crystallized system the formation and growth of a small number of particles are modeled and the process of their forming as a result of contact of growing crystals and their further interrelated growth is examined. The method is based on the program generation of a crystal seed in 3D space with regular grid. Each seed is set by the complex of voxels, their growth - by incremental motion of voxels, which depict the crystal's face. Results. The program that realizes this method can be used to receive 3D image of the solidifying system in different points in time, plotting its two-dimensional sections in different levels. Conclusion. Mathematic modeling with the use of the developed program has shown that it appropriately reflects the peculiarities of structuring during many technological processes (during the crystallization of pure metals, liquid-phase sintering of hard alloys and alloys with formation of one solid phase). The developed program can be used as a source module for the modeling of the crystallization of metals and alloys in non-uniform temperature and concentration fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]