Abstract
The performance of castings is primarily dependent on the solidification microstruc- tures and defects. Gas porosity is one of the major casting defects existing in the castings of aluminium and magnesium alloys. In this work, a two-dimensional (2D) cellular automaton (CA) model is pro- posed to simulate dendrite and microporosity formation during solidification of alloys. The model involves three phases of liquid, gas and solid. The effect of liquid-solid phase transformation on the nucleation and growth of porosity, the redistribution and diffusion of solute and hydrogen, and the effects of surface tension and environmental pressure are taken into account. The growth of both den- drite and porosity is simulated using a CA approach. The diffusion of solute and hydrogen is calculated using the finite difference method (FDM). The simulations can reveal the coupling and competitive growth of dendrites and microporosities, as well as the microsegregation of solute and hydrogen. The model is applied to simulate the microporosity formation during solidification of an Al-7%Si (mass fraction) alloy. The effects of initial hydrogen concentration and cooling rate on microporosity forma- tion are investigated. The results show that the simulated pressure difference between the inside and outside of a porosity as a function of the reciprocal of porosity radius obeys the Laplace law. With the increase of initial hydrogen concentration, porosity volume fraction increases, and the incubation time of microporosity nucleation and growth decreases, while the porosity density does not increase obvi- ously. With cooling rate decreasing, porosity volume fraction and maximum porosity radius increase, as well as porosity nucleates and starts to grow at higher temperatures. However, the porosity density shows a decreasing trend with the decrease of cooling rate. The competitive growth between different microporosity and dendrites is observed. The porosity nuclei with larger size are able to grow prefer-
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