China Foundry (Jul 2015)
A new high shear degassing technology and mechanism for 7032 alloy
Abstract
Degassing is very important for aluminum alloys especially for 7xxx series alloys. In the present study, a high shear technology was used to degas 7032 aluminum alloy in order to study its degassing efficiency. The experimental results showed that the high shear technology can significantly degas 7032 aluminum alloy. By applying intensive melt shearing and an Ar injection of 60 seconds, the density index, Di, was reduced from 13.25% to 0.28% and the hydrogen concentration was significantly reduced from 0.31 to 0.10 mL/100g Al. Compared with the conventional rotary degassing, high shear technology showed a much higher degassing efficiency, achieving a lower concentration of hydrogen in a shorter time. The water simulation experiment was used to study the mechanism of the high degassing efficiency. The small bubble size and the uniform distribution of Ar bubbles with the application of high shear technology are believed to be the main cause for the high degassing efficiency.
