Abstract
Semisolid process is possible in any material system possessing a freezing range where the microstructure should consist of the nondendritic globular solid phase separated and enclosed by the liquid phase, referred to as semisolid slurry. There are two primary semisolid processing routes, thixocasting and rheocasting. Especially, rheocasting process has become a new focus in the field of semisolid process because of its many advantages such as no special billet required and possibility of in-house scrap recycling, compared with the thixocasting process. In-Ladle direct thermal control (DTC) rheocasting has been developed, based on the fact that there is slurry and mush transition in every molten metal and the transition, which normally occurs in the range of liquid traction of 0.1 to 0.6, could be controlled by controlling solid shape and relative solid-liquid interfacial energy. In this study, A356 Al alloy was investigated to verify In-Ladle DTC rheocasting for obtaining semisolid slurry. Modeling of heat transfer was carried out to investigate the effect of pouring temperature and ladle material, geometry and temperature and the simulation results were compared with the actual experiments.
