This article aims to introduce the synchrotron radiation for its utilization in the casting and solidification fields as an unique tool for observation of real time phenomena of molten metal during solidification. General features of the synchrotron radiation were briefly introduced for readers in the casting and solidification fields, with no background regarding to synchrotron radiation. And basic principles of imaging technologies using synchrotron light for in-situ observation of molten metal were explained together with exemplary research works, which were reported on the casting and solidification fields in recent years. As a practical guide, real time observation of Al-Si casting alloy was introduced with experimental facilities, image acquisition, and processing together with representative results.

Metal foam is a porous or cellular structure material and representative property is a very high porosity. Foamed materials have very special properties such as sound, vibration, energy and impact absorption capacity. Especially this properties are widely used for safety demands of architecture, auto and aircraft industry. But metal foam need to increased its compression strength and hardness. This study were researched about Al-Si alloy foams with variation amount of Si contents for their fabrication and properties such as porosity, cell structure, microstructure and mechanical properties. The result are that the range of pore size is 2~4 $mm{\phi}$, the high porosity are 88%, high yield strength is 1.8MPa, the strain ratio is 60~70% and vickers hardness is 33.1~50.6.

The microstructure of Al-5%Mg based alloy mainly consists of aluminum matrix with a small amount of AlMn phase. The addition of Sc or Zn to the base alloy significantly improved the as-cast tensile strength, while the addition of Fe deteriorated both strength and ductility. Although the Al-5%Mg based alloy was not heat-treatable, aging hardening could be observed in the case that Sc or Zn was added to the base alloy. TEM analysis showed that very fine AlSc or AlMgZn precipitates were formed after T6 heat treatment, resulting in enhanced strength. The corrosion resistance measured as corrosion potential was found to decrease a little by adding Zn, whereas other alloying elements were not clearly influential.

The effects of alloy elements and cooling rate on the solidification path and the formation behavior of $\beta$ phase in Fe-containing Al-Si alloys were studied based on the thermodynamic analysis and the pertinent experiments. The thermodynamic calculation was systematically performed by using Thermo-Calc program. For the thermodynamic analysis in high alloy region of Al-Si-Fe ternary system, a thermodynamic database for Thermo-Calc was correctly updated and revised by the collected up-to-date references. For the thermodynamic-based prediction of various solidification paths in Fe-containing Al-Si system, liquidus projection of Al-Si-Fe ternary system, including isotherms, invariant, monovariant, bivariant reactions and equilibrium temperatures, was calculated and analyzed as functions of composition and temperature. The calculated results were compared to the experimental results using various casting specimens. In order to analyze various solidification sequences as functions of Si and Fe content, 4 representative alloy compositions, low Fe content in both low and high Si contents and high Fe content again in both low and high Si contents, were designed in this study. For better understanding of the influence of cooling rate on the formation behavior of $\beta$ phase, 4 alloys were solidified under furnace and rapidly cooled conditions. Cooling curves of solidified alloys were recorded by thermal analysis. Various important solidification events were evaluated using the first derivative-cooling curves. Microstructures of the casting samples were studied by the combined analysis of optical microscopy (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

Recently, automotive industry is attempting to replace steels for automotive parts with light-weight alloys such as aluminum alloy, because of the growing environmental regulations governing exhaust gas and the engine effectiveness of a vehicle. The low cycle fatigue (LCF) and high cycle fatigue (HCF) properties as well as the microstructure and tensile property were investigated on the low pressure cast A356 aluminum alloy wheel, which was followed by T6 heat treatment. The cast microstructure of the alloy influenced significantly on the low cycle and high cycle fatigue behaviors. The rim part of cast aluminum alloy wheel showed higher low cycle and high cycle fatigue strength compared with the spoke part, which should be caused by higher cooling rate of rim part. The spoke part of the wheel showed coarser dendrite arm spacing (DAS) and wide eutectic zone in the microstructure, which resulted in the partial brittle fracture and lower fatigue life time.