Abstract
Perhaps dendrite is the most observed solidification microstructure of many metal- lic materials. The dendritic morphologies show a dominating effect on the performance of casting products. A lot of work has been carried out to investigate the formation mechanism of dendritic microstructure. It is found that the development of dendritic microstructures is a complicated process controlled by the interplay of many factors such as thermal and solute transfer, capillary etc. Cellular automaton (CA) can simulate the solidification process with a high computational efficiency, thus, attracts great attentions. In recent years, progress has been made on the two dimensional CA models for the solidification microstructure formation. But up to date researches on three dimensional CA model are very limited. A combined cellular automaton-finite difference (CA-FD) model for the three dimensional simulation of dendritic growth was developed in this paper. Simulations were performed to investigate the dendritic growth in an undercooled Al-Cu alloy as well as in a directionally solidified Al-Cu alloy. The numerical results showed clearly the development of the free dendrite in the under- cooled melt and the microstructure evolution in the directionally solidified alloy and agreed well with the theoretical predictions and the experimental results.
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