Impact of major alloying elements on the solodification parameters of cast hypoeutectic AlSi6Cu (1–4 wt.%) and AlSi8Cu(1−4 wt.%) alloys

The present work displays the potential of cooling curve analysis to characterize the solidification path of cast hypoeutectic series of Al-Si6-Cu(1−4 wt.%) and Al-Si8- Cu(1−4 wt.%) alloys. The aim of this work was to examine how variation in chemical composition of silicon and copper may affect characteristic solidification temperatures, fraction solid, and thermal freezing range of investigated alloys. Eight different Al−Si−Cu alloys (Al-Si6-Cu1, Al-Si6-Cu2, Al-Si6-Cu3, Al-Si6-Cu4, Al-Si8-Cu1, AlSi8-Cu2, Al-Si8-Cu3 and Al-Si8-Cu4) have been analyzed applying cooling curve analysis technique. Characteristic solidification temperatures have been determined using cooling curves or their corresponding first derivative curves along with ΔT curves. Fraction solid curves determined from recorded cooling curves have been used to calculate terminal freezing range and estimate crack susceptibility coefficient for each alloy. Theoretical mode for prediction of the cracking susceptibility coefficient developed by Clyne and Davies has been considered in this work. In addition, a novel mathematical model for prediction of crack susceptibility coefficient based on data collected from cooling curve analysis has been proposed.