COMPARISON OF EXPERIMENTS WITH COMPUTER SIMULATIONS OF CONSTANT UNIDIRECTIONAL MELT FLOW ALONG SOLIDIFICATION FRONT

摘要

Effects of melt flow on structure formation during solidification were studied experimentally using a specially designed setup consisting of an electromagnetic pump and a melt guiding system with a built-in chill with the aim to correlate the structure and process parameters under conditions of constant melt flow. In the present paper, CFD simulations of melt flow and solidification are applied as a tool to interpret experimental results. It is demonstrated that flow parameters such as velocity and temperature affect the grain morphology, size and growth direction in a binary Al-Cu alloy.