A theoretical investigation of fluid flow,heat transfer and solidification(solidification transfer phenomena,STP)was presented which coupled with direct-current(DC)magnetic fields in a high-speed strip-casting metal delivery system.The bidirectional interaction between the STP and DC magnetic fields was simplified as a unilateral one,and the fully coupled solidification transport equations were numerically solved by the finite volume method(FVM).While the magnetic field contours for a localized DC magnetic field were calculated by software ANSYS and then incorporated into a three-dimensional(3-D)steady model of the liquid cavity in the mold by means of indirect coupling.A new FVM-based direct-SIMPLE algorithm was adopted to solve the iterations of pressure-velocity(P-V).The braking effects of DC magnetic fields with various configurations were evaluated and compared with those without static magnetic field(SMF).The results show that 0.6 T magnetic field with combination configuration contributes to forming an isokinetic feeding of melt,the re-circulation zone is shifted towards the back wall of reservoir,and the velocity difference on the direction of height decreases from 0.1 m/s to 0.Furthermore,the thickness of solidified skull increases uniformly from 0.45 mm to 1.36 mm on the chilled substrate(belt)near the exit.
Bridgman-type directional solidification experiments were conducted for Ti-46Al-8Nb （mole fraction, %） alloy. The effects of the growth rate and the diameter on the microstructure, phase transition and hardness of the alloy were investigated. The results show that with the increase of the growth rate and the decrease of the diameter, the fullyβphase solidification changes to the peritectic solidification, and the final microstructure is composed of theα2/γlamellar structure and a multiphase microstructure （B2 phase,α2/γlamellar structure） respectively, which can be attributed to the solute enrichment resulting from the decreasing diffusion and convection ability. The occurrence of peritectic reaction at high growth rate promotes the solute segregation heavily and the coarse lamellar spacing in Al-and Nb-rich region, which greatly decreases the hardness values and leads to the discontinuity of the hardness curves with the increase of the growth rate. Comparatively, the Ti-46Al-8Nb alloy has lower hardness values than the other applied TiAl-based alloys in previous studies.
Sn-36%Ni peritectie alloys were directionally solidified at different growth rates under a constant temperature gradient （20 K/mm）, the dependences of microstructural characteristic length scales on the growth rate were investigated. Experimental results are presented, including primary and higher order dendrite arm spacings 21, 22, 23 and dendrite tip radius R of primary NisSn2 phase. Comparisons between the theoretical predictions and the experimental results show that, for the primary dendrites, 21=335.882v-0.21, which is in agreement with the Kurz-Fisher model; for the secondary dendrites, λ2=44.957v-0.277, which is consistent with the Bouchard-Kirkaldy model; for the tertiary dendrites, λ3=40.512v-0.274; for the dendrite tip radius, R=22.7v-0.36. The experimental results also show that the 21/22 changes greatly with increasing growth rate while the 21/23 has no significant change, indicating that tertiary dendrite arms have a more similar growth characteristics to primary dendrites compared with secondary dendrites. The λ1/R ranges from 2 to 2.3 with the increase of growth rate. Key words： Sn-Ni alloy; directional solidification; dendrite arm spacing; dendrite tip radius
Peng PENG Xin-zhong LI Yan-qing SU Dong-mei LIU Jing-jie GUO Heng-zhi FU
