Solidification Calculations of Precious Alloys and Al-Base Alloys for Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

In this paper, we report two cases studies where solidification processes were successfully investigated with CALPHAD-based methodologies. The first one refers to the use of thermodynamic databases to describe the solidification processes of a precious Au-base alloy containing Ir as a grain refiner. The second one concerns the development and use of a quaternary database for Al-Mg-Si-Er alloys for additive manufacturing, where Er is added as a nucleating agent. While in the former case, the solidification process was investigated by running the Thermo-Calc software with a specific TCNOBL1 commercial database, in the latter, the necessary database was first constructed, using available thermodynamic assessments in the literature and experimental data, and then applied to investigate the solidification behavior of selected alloys.

Keywords

• solidification processes
• Al-base alloys
• precious alloys
• additive manufacturing
• Scheil-Gulliver solidification simulation