Hypercooling Limit Research Articles

Hypercooling of completely miscible alloys

Calorimetric measurements and undercooling investigations were performed on the high-melting, completely miscible binary systems (Co, Ni, Fe)-Pd. The alloys, characterized by phase diagrams with concavous liquidus and solidus lines, exhibit heat-of-fusion values considerably lower than calculated assuming ideal solution behavior. As a consequence, these metallic systems offer the possibility to achieve the hypercooling regime at a reduced extent of undercooling. Investigations on the undercoolability of the liquid alloys indicate the surmounting of the calculated hypercooling limit. Time-resolved radiation thermometry experimentally proved the appearance of complete isenthalpic solidification. Metallographic investigations of samples solidified from different levels of undercooling revealed the corresponding stages of microstructural evolution.

Analysis of stability of a planar solid-liquid interface in a dilute binary alloy

The question of stability of a planar solid-liquid interface in undercooled pure and alloy melts has been reconsidered without the restrictive assumption of no heat flow in the solid made in earlier works. The modified analysis indicates that provided the thermal gradient on the solid side of the interface, Gs, is positive, stability can be achieved in an undercooled alloy melt for growth rates R>Ra, whereas a recent analysis by Trivedi and Kurz, which assumes Gs = 0, suggests that stability is possible only if R>Ra + Rat. Here Ra is the familiar absolute stability limit of Mullins and Sekerka and Rat, is the absolute stability limit in an undercooled pure melt, as identified by Trivedi and Kurz. The absolute stability criterion for steady-state planar growth in an undercooled alloy melt is thus the same as derived earlier by Mullins and Sekerka for directional solidification. Relaxing the restrictive assumption of Gs = 0 also reveals that there is a regime of stability for low growth rates and low supercoolings. Stability is possible under these conditions if Gs>0, and the bath undercooling ΔTb < ΔTO + ΔTh/2, where ΔTO is the freezing range of the alloy and ΔTh is the hypercooling limit for the pure melt. For large supercoolings, Gs < 0, and the interface will be unstable with respect to large wavelength perturbations, even if R > Ra + Rat.

Undercooling studies on Nb-Pt and Nb-Si alloys using the 105 meter drop tube

Niobium-platinum samples of compositions ranging from 16 to 32 at. % have been undercooled to as much as 540 K in the low gravity, containerless environment of the 105 meter drop tube located at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. Undercooling was terminated in the Nb-Pt samples by the nucleation and growth of the Nb3Pt phase. In the 16–18 at. % Pt samples, this resulted in samples which are completely Nb3Pt, in contrast to both the equilibrium phase diagram and the non-undercooled samples which formed with Nb dendrites and interdendritic Nb3Pt. Undercoolings for the Nb-Si samples were up to 670 K, which corresponds to 27% of the liquidus temperature or 80% of the estimated hypercooling limit. In the Nb-Si system, a coupled zone was identified as well as a metastable extension of the solubility limit of Si in Nb due to deep undercooling.