Grain size control in al-4.8 wt.% Cu alloy by computeraided cooling curve analysis

Generally Al–Ti and Al–Ti–B master alloys are added to the aluminium alloys for grain refinement. The cooling curve analysis (CCA) has been used extensively in metal casting industry to predict microstructure constituents, grain refinement and to calculate the latent heat of solidification. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of grain refinement on the grain size of Al-4.8 wt.%Cu alloy by cooling curve analysis. To do this, alloy was grain refined by different amount of Al-5Ti-1B master alloy and all samples were solidified at constant cooling rate of 0.19 ℃/s. The temperature of the samples was recorded using a K thermocouple and a data acquisition system connected to a PC. The results show that the segregating power of Ti is very high and it segregates to the nucleant–liquid interface which leads to constitutional supercooling within which other nucleant particles get activated for nucleation. Other results show that with considering the changes in the primary undercooling (ΔTRU) as the main factor to determine the effectiveness of grain refinement process, it was found that by grain refinement, the value of undercooling decrease was approximately zero.