Secondary dendritic arm spacing and cooling rate relationship for an ASTM F75 alloy

Abstract

The solidification evolution of an ASTM F75 alloy was studied for samples quenched during directional cooling. These samples were obtained using five extraction rates (1.2–18 mm/min) and two temperature gradients (6 and 12 K/mm), leading to a 25-fold change in the cooling rate (0.13–3.31 K/s). The solidification range for this alloy is observed to be approximately 200 °C. The solid grows more rapidly in the first 100 °C of this interval, where a solid fraction of approximately 0.8–0.9 is reached. Coarsening of the Secondary Dendrite Arm Spacing, SDAS, occurs mainly during this growth period. This behavior defines an effective temperature interval for the SDAS coarsening instead of the whole solidification interval. Consideration of this effective temperature interval enables us to reconcile the measured SDAS-cooling rate relationship with that obtained from the data for the cast samples. A model of the SDAS coarsening during anisothermal solidification of multicomponent alloys is proposed. The predictions of this model compare well with the present experimental results.

Keywords

• Directional solidification
• Dendrite arm spacing
• Coarsening
• Multicomponent alloys
• Biomaterials
• Cobalt alloy